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South Texas | Dear GMO,
All your statements are correct. But immaterial. Organic is merely a marketing device. Like Nike shoes. Those shoes aren't any better than others, but advertising and marketing have made them desireable. So they sell at a higher price, returning the advertising and then some. (If they didn't, we'd be lusting after Buster Brown's.)
Organic guys are merely filling a perceived need--and at an impressive price as well. If somebody wishes to eat a dead cow that allegedly had a wonderful, fulfilling and contented life, well, then, that sounds to me like they are taking full advantage of our Constitution's "pursuit of happiness" clause. If they prefer a blemished apple over the ones I get at the market, that's just fine with me.
Meanwhile, in my opinion, the organic farmers and small coops will have a few more good years left to enjoy their niche. After that, the big boys will arrive, having figured out how to do just the bare minimum in order to meet the USDA's rules on a mass scale and will be reaping the higher prices for themselves while underselling the independent guy. (Who, by the way, was the one who insisted USDA write the rules in the first place.) As to wasting resources, that'll be self-correcting if and when people get hungry and again need the production efficiency that you provide today.
By the way, who gets to decide if a resource is wasted? I use LP fired water heaters here in south Texas. I don't use solar heaters. Is that wasting? (The State, for mystical reasons, pays $150 to the supplier to install a LP heater at my place--meaning it's paid by taxpayers. I'd have to pay for solar myself.) My hay supplier irrigates his coastal Bermuda fields. Coastal Bermuda was specifically bred at Texas A&M to handle drought. (It just goes dormant, and will come back whenever it rains again.) Is his irrigation wasteful or good business? Ah well, organic production can't be more wasteful than whatever resources go into Bobbleheads and the 37th cheap imitation of a Leatherman, can it?
Take care. Stetts | |
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Organic
