INVIGORATING A MOVEMENT
Dear America,
The Real Organic Project is our attempt to answer some questions: Can we still choose to farm and eat differently? Is it possible to grow a movement that stands on a firm foundation of biological farming? Can our farming start and end with the life in our soils?
Can organic farming survive success in the marketplace?
These are honest questions. The success or failure of the Real Organic Project will provide some answers.
This week I talked with an activist organic farmer in Australia. They are creating their own national organic standard, and there is a battle over the certification of hydroponics. Because of us. Because of America. Their fight is entirely due to our corporate redefinition of organic in America. Just as every farm is part of a larger regional system, which is part of a larger national system, so is America part of a world food system. What happens in one part affects all the other parts. When the EU says no to hydroponics in organic, it affects our movement in America. When America says soil really isn’t that important to organic, it affects every country in the world.
If America says that animals in an organic system can be confined in large numbers for greater profit, that doesn’t expand the organic tent. That tears the tent down. That redefines organic.
We reject that redefinition. The old definition is still good. We just need to keep making that definition into a living reality. There is more to learn. Real Organic will always keep learning. But Real Organic works. It solves our problems. It feeds us. It nourishes us. It heals our planet.
We are not arsonists. We are firefighters. It is not our goal to destroy anything. It is our goal to build an alternative to something that is terribly broken. Please join us. Without you, we cannot succeed.
With you, we cannot be stopped.
Dave Chapman
www.realorganicproject.org dave@realorganicproject.org / 802 299 7737
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