Is buying organic defeating the purpose if it is Cargill?

[ChickenCanoe]

List of allowed and prohibited substances.
http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/ams...e=NOPNationalList&resultType=&acct=nopgeninfo

 

[Noymira]

This is a very interesting thread! I love seeing the different input and ideas from all ages and experience levels. I was looking into local feed here, since one of our feed stores carries two local brands, one Organic and one not. The Organic is twice the cost of the non-Organic, although I have no idea about GMO's in either, I'm going to contact both companies and ask. I bought the non-Organic local, since $22 bag for the Organic local just seemed crazy! I also don't trust that all Organic labels are what they are all hyped up to be.

We are hoping to teach our daughter that food doesn't just come from the grocery store, our food production systems in this country have become far too industrialized. We are raising these hens for eggs, and will eventually be raising some meat birds as well. We shop a lot at the local farmers markets here in warm weather for produce. We have a variety of local CSA's we could buy into, but they are still very cost prohibitive and the price of locally raised meat is very hard to swallow. We also eat a lot of wild game that is given to us by family and friends who hunt, and I am looking to get back into hunting and fishing myself in the future to help supplement our food supply.

I am very much interested in becoming self sufficient so we are not so dependent on such a fragile and turbulent economic system. I'm not much of a "the end of the world as we know it" kind of conspiracy theorist, but I do believe that economic and civil unrest is a real possibility in our unstable world and am frightened by the idea that most people would have no idea what to do if the grocery stores and banks suddenly closed and money was no longer worth anything. I personally want some skill sets that would help me and my family survive in such a situation.

It's good to be around people on this forum who feel much of the same! My husband humors me, but sometimes I think he thinks I'm just a little bit crazy.

 

[mamabahre]

you aren't crazy! I promise, my hubby thought I was nuts at first too but now he is gung-ho...We are saving up slowly but surely for land that we will use to be as self sufficient as we can! Biodiversity of crops is a part of that self sufficiency and thus one of my big issues with GMOs in general...You can't even get a decent heirloom (organic) seed unless you order from specialty catalogs or know an old time farmer who has managed to keep their crops free of GMO (a huge challenge)...I could go on and on but meh..

Oh we are paying 24.99 for a bag of organic feed here, versus 15.99 for non organic..We don't got through much so right now it isn't an issue but if we ever expand our flock significantly it will become one.

 

[Cindy in PA]

Purina is $14/50 here and Nature's Best Organic is $26/50lbs. Yes it is expensive, but my girls definitely consume less and 100 lbs. lasts 6 weeks instead of 4 weeks for Purina. I don't know why this is, and it doesn't make it equal in cost, but it isn't twice as much either. Again a certified organic feed should not contain any GMOs intentionally. Rules have also been updated since the first organic laws went into effect for livestock. Don't let someone tell you they don't buy organic because it's not organic. This can be the case, but do your research for yourself & decide what's best for you. I am not against conventional feed, just do not want to support it if I don't have to. And as far as age goes, I'm 54 & can remember the first Earth Day etc. We have done precious little to preserve much in the 41 years since.

 

[mamabahre]

Thank you Cindy...Your post made me smile and cringe (thinking of how little has been accomplished in those 41 years)....If anything I'd say thing have gotten worse but thats just me being a crazy environmentalist I guess...

I do disagree with people who INSIST that Organic food/feeds are just lying or contaminated all the time. I know that it occurs by accident but things have gotten tighter since the first regulations and for those of us who care about it I find we are the most well researched and versed in the subject. I am in fact somewhat obsessed with the rules/regulations/laws regarding the whole subject.

We are just guinea pigs in the big GMO experiment (gee I wonder why Europe has banned GMOs and the import of products containing GMOs??? maybe because they are watching Americans because we are literally lab rats for companies like Monsanto) and I would prefer not to subject myself or my family OR my animals to that experiment.

Now back to the original issue. Can someone please tell me I am not going to hell for buying Cargill, even if it is organic!

 

[catchthewind]

Quote:
You are not going to hell for buying Cargill!

Agree with the rest of your post too. If I didn't have the local (non-certified organic) option, I'd likely opt for the organic one. Though the price difference isn't nearly as huge here. $13/20kg for the conventional, $15/20kg for the local, non-GMO stuff, and $18/20kg for the organic. And I can actually get the organic one for $15/20kg if I'm willing to drive a bit further.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Organic is not necessarily a superior feed nutritionally than conventional feed. It is however, Organic. In a nutshell, grains without insecticides and chemical fertilizers. To me that means fewer toxins/poisons.
In my observations, organic isn't going up in price as fast as non-organic.
Other than the feed I buy, my birds are organic. No antibiotics, pesticides, vaccines, hormones - when free ranging they're on organic pasture. I even dechlorinate their water.
Starting May 1, I'm switching one flock to organic and raise the price of their eggs 1.50 to see what people gravitate towards. If they buy the organic eggs, I'll switch all birds to it.

 

[mamabahre]

Hmm I totally agree that a large scale commercially bought organic feed (cargill in my case) is probably not nutritionally superior to a non organic. I imagine (or hope for everyone's sake) that they should be pretty identical nutrition wise.

The lack of pesticides/chemicals/GMOs are the biggies for me doing organic. It all comes back to us in some for other and like I've said before I just try as hard as I can to limit my family's overall exposure in all the ways that I personally can control. Chicken feed is one...


ETA ChickenCanoe, I bet you will have good success with your organic pastured eggs. Tell people they are BOTH and they will clamor for them. Here on Cape Cod the vendors at the Farmer's Markets can command 6 bucks a dozen for organic pastured eggs and the market opens at 8am... The eggs are sold out by 9am EVERY SINGLE WEEK...It is crazy.

 

[panner123]

What some may think is that I am against organic, which is not true. What I am against is someone telling me something is organic and it is not. You will not find any chemicals on my property, what you will find is a compost pile bigger than most city lots. Some think this organic movement started just a few years ago, when actually it started in the early 1970's. Here is where things went to hell in a hand basket. People much like myself had a farm that that were scratching out a living on. When the much smaller farmers were stating look at me I use no chemicals so my produce is better for you, but you most pay more for this. When in fact the end product was the same. Still today this holds true. If anyone can show or tell me how a rice farmer in Butte, Sutter or Yuba county Ca. can sell part of his rice as organic and the rest as non-organic, please do so. What I will tell you is that all this rice came from the same field. These fields are sowed by airplane and sprayed the same way. This is done at about 500 feet off the ground, which makes these fine sprays of chemicals go where ever the wind takes them. This goes for the neighboring peach farmer as well, the chemicals do not stop at the property line. Now when the farmer goes to market he knows he needs to make so much money to pay his bills. And the price of rice will not cover them, unless he has some organic. So what does he do, he get some cerifitied acres and grows all his organic rice there. How can anyone grow thousands of rice on a few hundred acres of land? Believe this and I have some ocean front property in Az. Same goes for the corn and wheat growers in the mid west.

What an organic grower will tell you is, his produce taste better. Not true, the taste is the same. He will tell you it is more nutritious, not true. He will tell you his product has no chemicls in it. Here is the gray area. If his is a true organic grower, this is true, unless his farm is next to a large commerical farm. His product has the over spray from his neighbor. It can't be helped. He believes in his heart his product is truly organic, he did everything by the book.

It can't be done in todys world, unless you have a big bubble over your property.

I love following a produce truck from the valley to some of the high end organic stores and resturants in San Francisco and Marin County, Ca. The truck next to it left the field for the produce market in South San Francisco, to be sold at Belaire, Saveway and the rest or the stores. Your larger stores sells the lettuce for a buck a head, yet you will pay three times that much for the same product at the organic store in town.

Some dead hards won't believe this happens today, but it does. There is NO way ever truck load can be tested. Until they can this will happen. When they can, they will find it is to late.

Off my soap box.

 

[mamabahre]

Quote:
Well here is your problem. Your soapbox is a very subjective one. You can say that the taste is the same (most people, myself included disagree), you can also say that organic produce is NOT more nutritious but all the studies completely disagree with you. Sorry but true. Do some research before you preach. You can say they use chemicals but you are thinking of LARGE SCALE organic farming. That is why local is so much more important than simply organic. You are getting caught up on a single word without realizing the larger implications of the situation.

Local is generally best, it is usually organic. It IS better tasting, it IS more nutritious, it is made without chemicals. the key word is LOCAL!

Also, you are ignoring the larger picture of how truly destructive large scale farming is on a global level. You are ignoring the dangerous implications of what GMOs could do to this world as a whole. It is naive to think that our actions in regard to large scale farming will have no effect and those of us who take an active interest in organic and "beyond organic" movements generally have a lot of knowledge on the subject because it means so much to us!

Someone else here mentioned in a previous post they will continue to feed your chickens "the same way you have for 60 years" What is ironic is unless their chickens have been foraging the same unmolested land for 60 years they CAN'T be feeding them the same way because the farming process has changed so dramatically in 60 years. What they were feeding their chickens was NOT GMOs...now it is (unless you buy organic)...What they were feeding their chickens was not laden with pesticides/chemical fertilizers because large scale chemical fertilizers were discovered as leftovers from WEAPONS manufacturers during WWII...

So I guess I will have to disagree with you on a lot of stuff but you are preaching to a more educated crowd about organics and what you are preaching is generally incorrect.
Sorry.