Agreeing to . . .Agree

      At one time, early in my tenure as an ag writer, there was actual contempt  between conventional and organic farmers. 
     
     There was an "enemy" mentality which didn't do anybody any good. 

                                             Strawberry season at Donaldson Farm in Mansfield, NJ.
      Today, most farmers recognize they are all in the same boat. Small and medium independent farmers are all doing their best.

     The farmers we have in the NorthEast aren't monster corporate farms. They practice integrated pest management rather than dump pesticides willy-nilly. For both the conventional farmer who uses chemicals and the organic farmer who uses biologics, the bottom line matters. They have families to support, equipment to buy and maintain, probably a lot of loans to pay off. 

     At a recent organic farming conference, New Jersey Agriculture Secretary Doug Fisher cautioned organic and sustainable farmers not to regard conventional farmers as the enemy. That caution went over well with most people present, although a few people were not happy with Fisher for saying it. 

   The keynote speaker at the conference, Mark Smallwood of the Rodale Institute, the place where the term organic farming was coined, pointed out the real enemies are the chemical companies who create situations where more and more of their product must be used. The enemies are the big, corporate farms where massive amounts of insecticides, herbicides, fungicides and rodenticides (there is not such thing as a "pesticide," poison is poison) are applied to the fields. 

  I don't know why these corporations don't realize if they poison the planet they will die, too. But they don't. Or they think money can buy immortality -- the money they give to conservative politicians. And what are these politicians thinking? Some of them have children. And grandchildren. 

    Family farmers, regardless of whether they practice organic or conventional methods, have a lot more in common than they may think. They need to stick together.