From time to time we will post a small essay, rant, or article that we think may be of some interest to you.

The most recent posting appears at the top, like a weblog.

Flowers
Why Pay More?

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Flowers

Date: June 3, 2007

Did you know that 78% of cut flowers in the US are imported, mostly from Latin America? Most of these flowers are heavily laden with pesticides and other chemicals to help preserve them for the long trip from places like Columbia to your local supermarket. Workers at the processing plants are often teenagers, usually girls, starting out at 14 or 15 years old (the legal age for such work) or sometimes younger. They work in near freezing temperatures, for obscenely long hours, for slave wages. I won’t go into the horrific conditions here, but if you have ever read Dickens or anything on the child labor practices of the 18th or 19th centuries, you’ll get the general idea.

This “globilization” industry exists so that Americans can buy cheap bouquets for Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. For me, knowing what happens behind the scene makes it impossible to enjoy the beauty of these flowers.

So, we grow our own flowers. Organically. We will may never make a profit from these flowers – people can buy flowers much more cheaply at the supermarket, or just do without. So, why do we still do it?

Flowers in the home bring one of nature’s great visual and fragrant beauties into your everyday life. We want to be able to offer to our community that joy, without the chemicals, suffering, and thousands of “carbon miles” associated with the commercial flower trade. But we also have our own personal reasons. Yes, the flowers do grace our house, but more importantly, they surround our workplace. Between Linda and me, we are in the farm something like 150 hours a week, and the flowers provide us with a workplace paradise. And they do much more. The flowers provide food and habitat for birds, bees, butterflies, and many other beneficial insects. It is such a delight to see a small flowering plant with 10 butterflies on it, as we saw last week, or watch the attack of the lesser goldfinches on the leaves of a sunflower (they only take small nips, and the plants don’t seem to mind).

So, really, I’m not trying to push our flowers on you. I just want you to know there are real and important differences between what you get in the supermarket and what you get from a local organic grower, with flowers as with fruits and vegetables. If you would like to buy our flowers, we would be more than happy to work with you to ensure they arrive in you house in great shape. They should look beautiful for more than a week. If flowers are too expensive to buy, then try putting a child’s drawing of a flower in a nice frame, or take the time to walk in a beautiful garden on a regular basis or just spend some time here at the farm. Let nature’s living beauty add joy and solace to your life. And please, consider avoiding those imported flowers.

--Steven Butler

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Why Pay More?

Date: February 25, 2007

Nearly everyone would agree that it costs more to buy organic food than so-called conventional food. Still, organic food represents the fastest growing segment of the food industry, indicating many people feel it's worth the extra cost.

But, does it really cost more? Well, that depends on how you look at the cost. Certainly, the cash register receipts are clear on this point. But if we look at the hidden costs, we may find organic food is the less expensive option.

Government policy directly affects the true cost of food in a variety of ways. Most obvious, perhaps, are the federal farm subsidies that run in excess of $20 billion each year. Some of that goes to cotton growers, and some to tobacco, but the vast majority supports food production. Of course, it's all very complicated, but in simple terms, if not for those subsidies, somehow that $20 billion would be passed along to the consumer in the form of higher prices in the grocery store.

An even bigger government policy that hides the true cost of conventional food is in the many ways we support big oil. Huh? Oil is a huge part of US agriculture, from fertilizers and pesticides to monumental transportation costs. As expensive as that oil seems when you fill your car's gas tank or get your home heating bill, it represents a small amount of the true cost. That true cost is in the mountains of special legislation, investment incentives, tax credits, and most importantly, foreign policy spending. Often, when you hear an expression such as "protect our nation's strategic interests" you can simply substitute "protect big oil." But my point isn't that any of this is wrong or evil, only that it reflects a huge cost that isn't passed along the "food chain" to the end consumer, but is buried in our national budget and funded (eventually) by taxes.

Then there is perhaps the biggest cost of all - the cost of trying to restore the carbon balance on the planet before greenhouse heating radically changes our climate. Depending on how this is done, and how soon it is started in earnest, this little hidden expense may well be orders of magnitude more expensive than our (mis)adventure in Iraq.

How is a small, local organic farmer different? For one thing, many of us use very small amounts of petroleum products (such as diesel for a small tractor) in the ongoing operation of our farms. At Lindencroft, we work our farm by hand, use solar panels to generate electricity, and only deliver locally. No one needs to go to war to fight for oil to keep us going, thank you very much. We fertilize with compost that comes from farm trimmings, restaurant waste, horse manure, and other natural sources. It's a short carbon cycle from plant to animal back to plant, it's sustainable, and it relies on no fossil fuels. We use natural methods to control insects, such as creating habitat for beneficial insects that control the crop pests. In other words, we use a simple, natural, ages-old model to grow food. It doesn't have hidden costs, require huge, expensive infrastructures, or government handouts to work.

Buying your food from a local organic farmer isn't cheap, but it is ultimately less expensive than supermarket food. One family at a time, we can show the nation a way to have delicious, nutritious, affordable food that helps the planet and reduces world tensions. I think that's a pretty good bargain.

--Steven Butler

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Last updated: June 4, 2007