$50 million to go organic

Much of the farming we see being done these days is mega-corporate type farms with abundant use of chemicals to increase produce yields. It isn’t very often these days that you see family farms of a few thousand acres. This was the type of farm I was use to growing up near and working on every summer and sometimes during the winters.

One of the problems with the mega-corporate farms though is there is more interest in bigger yields using chemical fertilizers rather than the tried and true methods of crop rotations as practiced by the smaller family farms and a growing number of organic farms. As we see the growing effects of mega farm factories on our farming landscape the USDA has decided to grant new aids to the Organic Trade Association in order to “further enhance organic farming”.

This new initiative has gotten further boosting from the Obama in the form of $50 million to help farmers switch to more organic methods of farming. these funds will support previously non-organic farmers as they learn new skill sets that include natural nutrient management, crop rotation and pesticide-free pest control.

The big problem with the new program though is its narrow window of opportunity for farmers to take advantage of the project. All applications must be in place before May 29th. Even with such a tight timeframe it is nice to see that the government sees the validity of organic farming as a viable alternative to farm factories that have predominated our farming landscape for too many years.

hat tip to Treehugger