Illegal Organics!

Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 12 July 2024…

Hey Y’all!

Good evening and happy Fast-Jet Friday from Air2Ground Farms! The fast jets today are the Mighty-Mighty F-15E Strike Eagle. The first pic is our own Hannah “HAIL” Slayton during her ground ops. The second is blurry but zoomed so you can see her giving us the “heart” gesture. The third pic is a Strike Eagle flying low level in Wales this week. It has been raining…in July! There is water in the creek and it’s flowing. That is a great indication that the grass is growing. I’ll start the farm update with the beef chickens. Bottom line, we are now off schedule. The last batch we processed was too small so we had to make some adjustments. In the extreme heat, the birds weren’t eating as much so they weren’t growing as much. For the batch that we were supposed to process this week, we stopped the 12 on/12 off feeding schedule and left their food down all the time. That was not enough to get batch 5 big enough to process. So, we decided to keep feeding them 2 more weeks. The carefully orchestrated schedule is now flexing. Until the birds start growing fast again, each batch will be on the farm for 10 weeks instead of 8. We have batches 5-9 on farm now, 250 birds. We have enough flex to do that without adding an additional brooder or chicken tractor. If they pick back up, we will process two weeks in a row and get back on schedule. If they don’t it will extend our season by two weeks. Two of the guilts came back into heat this week, so they weren’t bred when I thought. Hopefully it takes this time! Pigs' gestation period is easy to remember, 3 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days. We should start having piglets in about a month and continue through November. We will pull the boar until mid-December so we don’t have to worry with having piglets in the middle of winter. I realized it has been a while since I showed you the dairy herd, so I remedied that! The first 2 pics are of Mary, who is really growing! The next is her mom, Happy. The last pic is Stella (lying down) and Artois (standing next to her). Along with the animals, the garden is doing very well! We’re harvesting all sorts of tomatoes and peppers, green beans, Swiss chard, basil/thyme/oregano, and okra. And, I know they are organic…which isn’t as easy as you might think.

I’ve written about this topic before, but a recent article by Dr. Joseph Mercola brought it back to light. The organic food market, once a niche sector, has grown into a $205.9 billion industry, with projections that it will reach $532.72 billion by 2032. However, this growth has not come without significant challenges, particularly concerning the integrity and fairness of organic certifications and imports. U.S. organic farmers are facing an existential threat from low-priced organic imports, particularly from developing countries. These imports often escape the rigorous annual inspections mandated by the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) of 1990, allowing large commercial farms to bypass proper oversight. In fact, only about 2% of these imports are inspected annually, a stark contrast to the stringent inspections U.S. farmers undergo. This discrepancy puts American farmers, who adhere to strict standards, at a severe disadvantage, unable to compete with the lower prices of potentially non-compliant imports. Legal complaints and lawsuits have been filed against the USDA, challenging the legality of these imported organic certifications and demanding stricter enforcement of organic standards. The issue is compounded by rampant fraud within the organic sector. High-profile cases have surfaced where conventionally grown produce is sold as organic, resulting in millions of dollars in fraudulent sales. For example, Missouri grain broker Randy Constant was involved in a massive scheme, selling tens of millions of dollars worth of non-organic grain as organic, leading to severe economic impacts and damage to the industry’s reputation. Agribusinesses, supported by for-profit certifiers, have manipulated the system to their advantage. These entities often control their inspection processes, leading to conflicts of interest and potential fraud. This system, instead of supporting small farmers and communities in developing countries as initially intended, now predominantly benefits large agribusinesses, undermining the integrity of organic labels and trust among consumers. What does this mean for us at Air2Ground Farms? We will continue to feed GMO-Free food to our animals and use better than organic practices on our pastures to raise our products but will not seek out the “organic” label. We are not interested in playing the organic game when it is difficult, time consuming, very expensive, and there is rampant cheating! We’re not going to join the group of ILLEGAL ORGANICS!

Sunday’s video was a look at the garden as we pulled up some plants, replanted, and harvested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsLlpuqbYkU&list=UULFNqaipbTwMJVyld1tmsaCkA&index=2&pp=gAQBiAQB

Thursday’s Dust’er Mud podcast was a look at how to lose weight using a strategy called Inverse Thinking. Using that strategy, you detail how to accomplish the opposite of what you want to help illuminate things that might otherwise be missed. We discuss how to GAIN weight in order to then illustrate how to lose it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxWMv49qLeo&list=UULFNqaipbTwMJVyld1tmsaCkA&index=1&pp=gAQBiAQB

Cheers!

Psycho & Shelley