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Colby, Kansas | "What you like to call a gimmick, organic is a consumer driven market. Why on earth would are farmers so against someone giving consumers what they want to pay a premium for?"
Mark,
You are correct in that organic is a consumer driven market, the answer to why "conventional" farmers are against it is because you left out an adjective. Organic is a market driven by ignorant or misinformed consumers. Almost any organic product I have seen has been marked with either the explicit or implied notion that it is better than a "conventionally" produced product. The truth of the matter is (as I see it) no superiority exist for any organic product in terms of nutritional value, astetics (color, taste, etc) or food saftey.
The adoption of this false perception by consumers scares producers and rightly so. If enough people buy into this we will find oursleves increasing our cost of production as we all change to meet the consumer driven de-facto standard.
Another similar situation I can think of is when Creek Stone Farms wanted to test every head for BSE a year or two back. I generally support the rights of independent business, but felt it was critical that the USDA halt them from doing it for the good of the entire industry. Again, an instance of "ignorant consumer driven" during a time of media scare, tring to take prescidence over sound science. The end result would have been testing on every head nationwide with the cost ultimately passed back onto producers.
These situations really bother me as we are heading towards misinformed people making our business decisions for us. I'll step down now.
Lucas
Edited by LHaag 5/13/2008 23:16
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RR alfalfa
