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The Quarterly Newsletter of Georgia Organics
Growing Healthy Foods, Farms, & Families • Winter 2007-08 REGISTER EARLY! GO’s 11th Annual Conference & Trade Show February 28 - march 1, 2008
Sign up by February 1 and save! Register on-line at www.georgiaorganics.org or use the registration form on page 13. See Conference Highlights on pages 4-5.
Georgia Organics Board Election
GO Members! Your annual board election ballot is enclosed. See page 17 for details.
Introductory Course in Organic Farming & Gardening
Georgia Organics hosts a seven-part course for farmers and gardeners this winter and spring. See page 15 for details.
Advancing Organic Agriculture in Georgia Third in a three-part series from the Agroecology Lab at UGA. See page 15.
IN THIS ISSUE... A View of the Future with George Siemon Page 1
Buy Local Materials Available Page 23 Conference Highlights Pages 4-5 Conference Details & Registration Pages 7-13 Event Calendar Page 23
A View of the Future with George Siemon by Judith Winfrey George Siemon is many things to many people: a dairyman, an organizer, an activist, a leader, and a populist. Now CEO of the largest organic dairy cooperative in the country, the Organic Valley Family of Farms, Siemon has been a champion for sustainable family farms for nearly 20 years. A farmer himself, Siemon served on the USDA’s Small Farm Advisory Committee, and the National Organic Standards Board. He participated in the development of national standards for organic certification while chair of the Organic Trade Association’s Livestock Committee. He will be the keynote speaker at the Georgia Organics 11TH Annual Conference and Trade Show, and he recently shared some of his thoughts on taking food and family farms into the future.
GO: Alice Waters, the Berkeley chef, author, and food activist, has been outspoken on the topic of cheap food. She believes we need to pay more for our food. Do you agree? Siemon: I do. Since we started this co-op, the percentage of discretionary income that’s been spent on food has gone down from 11.5 percent to 9.5 percent. We are actually spending less on food, and we need to be careful about that. You get what you pay for, in environmental problems and health problems. It’s very important to control health costs, and I think there is no better health investment than organic foods.
GO: You’ve had a great deal of policy experience. What do you forecast as some of the issues on the horizon for small and organic growers? Siemon: The big thing in organics right now is concern about investment in the transition to organic given the high price of conventional commodities, ethanol, and a few other things. Ideally, we would come up with some transitional funds that encourage people to grow organic. Another important issue is profitability. There’s the romance and glamour of small family farms, but we need to make sure that these farms thrive, and that the economic viability of these new models—of CSAs, or organic farming—is there. In terms of challenges, the price of land is a big, big challenge, as well as the transfer of land to the next generation and the economic burden of purchasing land for new farmers starting up. How do we provide the infrastructure support needed to keep as much of the gain as possible, rather than starting all over again with every next farmer? GO: Have you seen successful strategies addressing any of those challenges? Siemon: There’s nothing more successful than making farming profitable. After that, there’s land ownership and conservation programs. That’s a tough issue when you look at the value of land right now compared with 20 years ago.
George Siemon, CEO of Organic Valley and keynote speaker.
GO: How are you feeling about the 2007 Farm Bill? Siemon: It’s very disappointing because there were a lot of good creative ideas early on, and all of those got waylaid into good old support for commodities. There’s a lot of money that’s being spent the wrong way, and I had hoped this Farm Bill would be creative and that we’d see Cont’d on page 18