I think it’s really dependent on where, when and what you grow. For example, strawberries grown near the Gulf Coast tend to be mature in February/March. Minnesota is still a frozen wasteland at that point. “June” bearing strawberries are totally a northern thing- they’re long since done in Texas by June. That’s more tomato, peach and blackberry time of year.
I do think that in a lot of cases, organic vegetables and fruit tend to be more local, because a lot of the organic fools are also into being locavores (which I don’t really have an issue with). So there’s a perception that organic stuff is fresher or better, which can be true, but it’s nothing to do with the fertilizer or pesticides used, but the fact that it got picked perfectly ripe last Thursday, instead picked not quite ripe 4 months ago, and kept in controlled temperature and atmosphere storage until last week, when it was brought out, warmed up and hit with a bunch of ethylene to change its color and make it softer.
But you could do the same with organic stuff, and it would be equally non-ideal, just the same as freshly-picked produce that used synthetic fertilizer and pesticides is delicious.
Organic farming doesn’t use less pesticides and in most cases use more (because the “natural” pesticides aren’t as effective). You can read about it in Mythbusting 101: Organic Farming > Conventional Agriculture (Scientific American blog) but here’s a hilighted quote:
Not only are organic pesticides not safe, they might actually be worse than the ones used by the conventional agriculture industry. Canadian scientists pitted ‘reduced-risk’ organic and synthetic pesticides against each other in controlling a problematic pest, the soybean aphid. They found that not only were the synthetic pesticides more effective means of control, the organic pesticides were more ecologically damaging, including causing higher mortality in other, non-target species like the aphid’s predators.
An organic farm may use less pesticides but it’s unlikely. And since they usually don’t get as high a crop yield they usually use more pesticides overall because they require more farmland.
And the thing is you need nutrients in the soil, you need to stop disease and insects from killing your crops, and you need to stop weeds from overtaking your fields. Therefore you can NOT grow crops without fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.
Ok, I take that back. You can do without. But you better be prepared for years when blight (plant diseases), insect swarms, and other issues wipe out whole crops. Examples are the great potato famine and boll weevil infestations in cotton. Also alot of Frances wine industry was almost wiped out by a disease once that went after grapes. And be ready for some very wormy apples.
You can do without herbicides (weed killers) but you are going to need thousands of more cultivators, tractors, and more manual labor out in the fields. Your also going to need to do without no-till. That will require more fuel, equipment, and labor. How many people are ready to pick up a hoe and head out into the fields?
You like chicken? So do hawks, coyotes, dogs, raccoons, badgers, and most every other animal. So what gets me is how do they keep so many “free range” chickens safe if they just let them run around? Chickens will also get into your garden and fields and eat your crops.
On “grass-fed” where the heck do they find that good of pasture? Good pasture (ex. alfalfa and clover) requires good land, fencing, moisture, and control of noxious weeds. That’s damn expensive. And a cow can go thru an acre of grass a day. I’ve seen cows overgraze a field to where it can take weeks, months, even years of lying fallow to finally come back so good pasture management requires moving them around alot and hoping for rain.
Then it doesnt help when all the best land keeps getting sold off to build houses on.
Best eggs I’ve ever eaten, hands-down, were from a friend of my wife who married some lunatic and moved with him to the hills in Missouri, where this nut was building his end-times bunker. (literally- they were actually the subjects of an episode of that “Doomsday Preppers” show).
Anyway, as part of their preparations for the apocalypse, they had a flock(?) of chickens whose eggs they sold for spare cash, and that my wife’s friend would bring with her when she’d come back to DFW to visit people. These chickens were literally free range- I’m pretty sure they fenced in their land, but that was about it from what I understand. The yolks were so deep yellow that they were almost orange, and they were awesome eggs… and I’m not even a big egg fan, truth be told.
I love seeing that claim on a package of eggs that also says the hens are free-range. Ayuh, you can have one of those things, but most likely, not both.
I’m not doing it justice, but there’s a small farm in Virginia called Polyface farm that seems to be successful at this. They use all the various species to utilize and reinforce each other’s biology in a symbiotic relationship. For example, after the cattle are moved out of a pasture, the chickens are moved in. The chickens eat the bugs and worms that grow in the cow manure. When the chickens move out, the field is left fallow (for less time than otherwise) while the chicken droppings fertilize the ground. A crop is then planted, when it’s harvested, the cattle are moved back in to eat the unharvestable plant parts, and the cycle repeats. There’s more to it than that, and I doubt it’s scalable to the size of mass-market industrial farming. But what they’re doing there is very fascinating.
You can do that under certain conditions. It’s actually a good idea if you can swing it because your farm would have different products. Beef, chicken, eggs, and regular crops.
Some issues:
You still need a LOT of pasture because once you remove the cows, they have to go somewhere.
Ok, the chickens go into the fields to eat the stuff they find in the manure. Thats 2-3 weeks tops. Where do they go then? Someone has to feed them normal chicken feed during the winter and other times.
You will need a LOT of chickens and I mean LOTS. Some farmers fields here in Kansas are 1,000 acres or more. At lets say 10 chickens per acre, thats 10,000 chickens! Wow, good luck building brooder houses that size.
If your going to do chickens and eggs thats a whole different set of issues involving butchering, gathering eggs, and then selling the eggs and chickens at market.
Where is the labor going to come from to deal with gathering eggs and shoveling chicken manure? What about butchering? About every 2-3 months you would have to cull out your herd and butcher. The process is cutting off their heads, scalding, plucking, cutting them open and removing entrails, then packaging them for sale. Here is a LINK for pictures and more details. It’s not a job that can be done by computer and it isnt even a STEM job.
They didnt say how they got the chickens to the fields and back home again. A farmers field could be miles away. I guess they could use portable chicken coops.
So really you go back to problems of land and labor. Land, is an issue because as you know, they are not making anymore of it and the best farmland keeps getting gobbled up for houses and strip malls. Labor is an issue because pay is going to be low in this business and few young people are willing to get cow or chicken shit on their hands.
Ummm… No, look again. There is more to Polyface than that. Look on their SITE. They get most of their money by being a coop and heck - they also sell a line of books, dvd’s, coloring books, tshirts, and people pay $20 to just tour the place!
A few years back, I worked in an organic blueberry farm for a couple of weeks, as a fruit picker. They didn’t spray at all. Nothing. The owner was pretty proud of that.
The plants were mulched with used tea leaves (the owner also ran a tea import fairtrade type deal from Uganda iirc), with large areas of scrub and woodland between fields. The owner said he just didn’t get much pest trouble. The place was teeming with wildlife, exactly what optimists would imagine an organic farm to be like.
I know perfectly well that is not the norm for organic farms, but they really do exist.
“Free range” doesn’t mean “no fence”. Yes, they can fly over it, but we only have one who does so regularly. Have to send the dog out to herd her back in each night.
I was more worried about hawks, but as long as it’s bright enough when you let the chickens out, they’ll hide if they see one.