THE NEW CANADIAN ORGANIC REGIME, YOU, YOUR CUSTOMERS,
AND WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW! - Discovery Organics
FAIR TRADE CERTIFICATION AND WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW. - Discovery Organics
An Open Letter to the
Next Farmer in Chief - Michael Polan
INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE - Dr. Vandana Shiva
ORGANIC FARMING CAN FEED THE WORLD - Dr. Vandana Shiva
VANISHING OF THE BEES - video
Local is not enough! - study from University of Davis Calif
QUICK AGRO-FUEL FACTS
Organic Gardening Tips - a great little web site......
WHATS ON MY FOOD
THE NEW CANADIAN ORGANIC REGIME, YOU, YOUR CUSTOMERS,
AND WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW!
Info From Discovery Organics
After years and years of meetings, public dialogue, negotiations with foreign certifiers and government agencies and compromise within Canada, the Canadian Organic Regime is now in place.
We could write pages and pages, in fact a book, about how this has come into play, but here is what you really need to know.
- The COR is a law, and has been passed and is in effect
- No one can use the word “organic” to describe a product sold anywhere in the country if it is not certified by an accredited certification body. This means that there will be less and less reason to define between “certified organic” and “organic,” and people who call their product organic (which was allowed previously under B.C.’s Natural Foods Act, but who weren’t certified) will now be breaking the law.
- The COR does not allow the sale of transitional product. It is either certified organic, or it is conventional, so we can no longer sell transitionally organic product.
- The COR is now synchronized with the national standards of Europe, Japan and the USA. There have been compromises to the regulations of some provincial bodies that certify within Canada, but none that were so major that the Canadian industry refused to adjust for, and very few that affected fruit and vegetables.
- There are a very few isolated cases where our standards will not allow certain processes or amendments that are allowable in the U.S., and the Canadian independent certifiers were not willing to bend the rules. In these rare circumstances, U.S. growers have been given a short period of time to change those processes or amendments to meet Canadian Standards as to not interrupt the flow of commerce. There has not been a lowering of standards from a few California farms, we are just forcing them to meet our standards, and giving them time to conform.
- We currently have 8 regional certification bodies in B.C. who certify to our exisiting, hard-fought-for, traditional standards that have been in place for many years. These include NOOA (North Okanagan), BDSBC (Biodynamic, BC Wide), SOOPA (South Okanagan), LEOGA (South Okanagan / Kootenays), KOGS (Kootenays), BOPA (Kootenays), IOPA (Vancouver Island and Gulf Islands) and STOPA (South Thompson / Fraser Canyon). These certifiers will continue to certify to the B.C. standards, though they will now be limited to selling within B.C. only.
- Many private international certifiers work in B.C., including Pro-Cert, Oregon Tilth, QAI, OCIA etc..
- All of the private certifiers comply with the COR, but only the three additional BC Certifiers have chosen to join the COR (being FVOPA, BCARA and PACS). Generally, most B.C. growers whose product is sold outside their bioregion in the commercial marketplace, and whose product would be sold out of province, have, over the years switched to these three certification bodies, or private international certifiers.
- As of July 1, only certifiers who are part of the COR can sell B.C. grown produce outside B.C.
- Ultimately, what this means to you is that produce that is grown and certified by the 8 regional certifiers who have not joined the COR will show in a new column on our price lists as “BC Only”, meaning that our customers outside B.C. cannot buy that product from the grower, or distributors within B.C.
- The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has been appointed as the “police” for the COR.
- Finally, the reality for you and your customers is that very little has changed. Virtually all organic growers who produce at a commercial level and sell through distributors have moved to the certifiers who are members of the COR. If you are buying direct from growers within B.C., or from growers within your own province, nothing has changed. The major impact will be for retailers in the Prairie Provinces who have direct relationships with small growers in B.C., who will not be allowed to buy directly from those growers if they are certified by the 8 provincial certifiers aligned with the COABC and utilizing our B.C. standards, and who have decided not to join the COR.
- As of today, our price lists have a new column that will designate the product we can no longer legally ship out of province, as “BC ONLY”.
FAIR TRADE CERTIFICATION AND WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW.
Up until 2006, Fair Trade was Fair Trade, and certified and regulated by FLO (Fair Trade Labelling Organization) and marketed by Transfair Canada here, and by other promotional bodies in each country (Transfair USA, Max Havelaar in Europe etc.). The demand for fair trade has grown exponentially faster than for organics and, just as more and more bodies have come into existence over the past few years to certify organics, the same is happening in the Fair Trade movement. There are now several fair trade certifiers up and running, trying to meet the backlog of producers who are wishing to attain this status. While FLO certification has been tied to the price paid to the producer, other certifiers have added other restrictions, but have harmonized their standards to those of FLO. IMO standards, meet FLO Standards, but also include IFOAM social standards for instance. Rainforest Alliance, the fastest growing certifier has their own complete set of standards, but at the financial end, are very similar to FLO. Several organic certifiers also are now licensed to also certify organic growers for FLO standards, including Bioagricert and Ecocert. In the future, as our fair trade offerings increase, we will also be adding yet another column to our price list, showing the fair trade certifier. In the short term, while we have product certified only by IMO and FLO, we will designate this with the organic certification.
An Open Letter to the
Next Farmer in Chief -
After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy - 19 percent. And while the experts disagree about the exact amount, the way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do - as much as 37 percent, according to one study. Whenever farmers clear land for crops and till the soil, large quantities of carbon are released into the air.
But the 20th-century industrialization of agriculture has increased the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the food system by an order of magnitude; chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food.
Put another way, when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases. This state of affairs appears all the more absurd when you recall that every calorie we eat is ultimately the product of photosynthesis - a process based on making food energy from sunshine. There is hope and possibility in that simple fact.
In addition to the problems of climate change and America's oil addiction, you have spoken at length on the campaign trail of the health care crisis. Spending on health care has risen from 5 percent of national income in 1960 to 16 percent today, putting a significant drag on the economy.
The goal of ensuring the health of all Americans depends on getting those costs under control. There are several reasons health care has gotten so expensive, but one of the biggest, and perhaps most tractable, is the cost to the system of preventable chronic diseases. Four of the top 10 killers in America today are chronic diseases linked to diet: heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes and cancer. It is no coincidence that in the years national spending on health care went from 5 percent to 16 percent of national income, spending on food has fallen by a comparable amount - from 18 percent of household income to less than 10 percent.
While the surfeit of cheap calories that the U.S. food system has produced since the late 1970s may have taken food prices off the political agenda, this has come at a steep cost to public health. You cannot expect to reform the health care system, much less expand coverage, without confronting the public-health catastrophe that is the modern American diet.
The impact of the American food system on the rest of the world will have implications for your foreign and trade policies as well. In the past several months more than 30 nations have experienced food riots, and so far one government has fallen. Should high grain prices persist and shortages develop, you can expect to see the pendulum shift decisively away from free trade, at least in food.
Nations that opened their markets to the global flood of cheap grain (under pressure from previous administrations as well as the World Bank and the I.M.F.) lost so many farmers that they now find their ability to feed their own populations hinges on decisions made in Washington (like your predecessor's precipitous embrace of biofuels) and on Wall Street. They will now rush to rebuild their own agricultural sectors and then seek to protect them by erecting trade barriers. Expect to hear the phrases "food sovereignty" and "food security" on the lips of every foreign leader you meet. Not only the Doha round, but the whole cause of free trade in agriculture is probably dead, the casualty of a cheap food policy that a scant two years ago seemed like a boon for everyone.
It is one of the larger paradoxes of our time that the very same food policies that have contributed to overnutrition in the first world are now contributing to undernutrition in the third. But it turns out that too much food can be nearly as big a problem as too little - a lesson we should keep in mind as we set about designing a new approach to food policy.
Michael Pollan in the New York Times
INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE
"Globalized industrialized food is not cheap: it is too costly for the Earth, for the farmers, for our health. The Earth can no longer carry the burden of groundwater mining, pesticide pollution, disappearance of species and destabilization of the climate.
Farmers can no longer carry the burden of debt, which is inevitable in industrial farming with its high costs of production. It is incapable of producing safe, culturally appropriate, tasty, quality food. And it is incapable of producing enough food for all because it is wasteful of land, water and energy. Industrial agriculture uses ten times more energy than it produces. It is thus ten times less efficient."
Dr. Vandana Shiva, scientist, world-renowned author, and grassroots leader in India. Member of the Policy Advisory Board of the Organic Consumers Association.
ORGANIC FARMING CAN FEED THE WORLD
"The $1.2 billion the World Bank says will solve the food crisis in Africa is a $1.2 billion subsidy to the chemical industry. Countries are made dependent on chemical fertilizers when their prices have tripled in the last year due to rising oil prices. I say to governments: spend a quarter of that on organic farming and you've solved your problems."
Vandana Shiva, an Indian physics professor and Organic Consumers Association Advisory board Member, speaking in Italy in response to the the U.N. food summit in Rome last month, where the World Bank pledged $1.2 billion in grants to help with the food crisis, most of which is earmarked for chemical fertilizers, pesticides and genetically modified (GM) crops.
Source: http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_13332.cfm
VANISHING OF THE BEES
This is truly a "canary in the coal mine" issue. This movie, Vanishing of the Bees which is nearing completion, analyzes why millions of bees are dying around the world and how dramatically it could impact the world's natural environment and food supply. The producers are in need of donations to complete the film and are currently eligible to receive matching funds from a foundation that will double donations. View this breath-taking movie trailer here: http://www.vanishingbees.com
And watch for it coming to a theatre near you - hopefully!
Local is not enough!
Here's another good reason to go organic. More flavonoids - a plant element that provides us with protection against heart disease, cancer and age related dementia. Because the organic system focuses on making the soil fertile using cover crops, manure and compost, nitrogen levels are already high and the plants can concentrate on making favonoids.
The flavonoids are the plants natural pest control! It all fits together so we can eliminate chemical fertilizer and pesticides! The study was a 10 years long and done at the University of California, Davis. (From Ode Magazine Dec/07)
Why Organic over Local?
Farm practices that include pesticides and herbicides of any kind kill important insect population such as bees, the plants (weeds) that might attract the insect predators and the micro organisms that make the soil a living viable resource. These practices are simply not sustainable over the long haul! Unsprayed does not cut it.
So buy local and organic for true sustain ability.
Buy organic as close to home as possible.
Buy local conventional over conventional from afar.
QUICK AGRO-FUEL FACTS
* Increasing fuel efficiency by just 3% would reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil more than all of the agrofuels combined.
* The amount of grain it takes to fill an average gas tank with ethanol would be enough to feed a person for a year (source: Foreign Affairs)
* If the United States stopped growing food and converted its entire grain harvest into ethanol, it would satisfy less than 16 percent of its automotive needs. (source: Earth Policy Institute)
* The majority of U.S. biofuels are produced from pesticide intensive genetically engineered crops (soy, corn).
* Monocultures of soy and sugar cane in Latin America and palm oil in Indonesia and Malaysia have led to massive deforestation and the loss of invaluable biodiversity.
* Current methods of industrial-scale biofuel production worsen global warming by increasing deforestation and degradation of peatlands and soils, while also creating more nitrous oxide emissions from fertilizer use.
Organic Gardening Tips - a great little web site......
http://www.organicgardentips.com/
1. Mulch your flower beds and trees with 3" of organic material - it conserves water, adds humus and nutrients, and discourages eeds. It gives your beds a nice, finished appearance.
2. Mulch acid-loving plants with a thick layer of pine needles each fall. As the needles decompose, they will deposit their acid in the soil.
3. The most important step in pest management is to maintain healthy soil. It produces healthy plants, which are better able to withstand disease and insect damage.
4. Aphids? Spray infested stems, leaves, and buds with very dilute soapy water, then clear water. It works even on the heaviest infestation. 5. Compost improves soil structure, texture, and aeration, and increases the soil's water holding capacity. It also promotes soil fertility and stimulates healthy root development.
23. Think "biodiversity". Using many different kinds of plants encourage many different kinds of beneficial insects to take up residence in your yard.
24. Organic pest control is a comprehensive approach instead of a chemical approach. Create a healthy biodiversity so that the insects and microbes will control themselves. Using natural products and building healthy soil is the best long-term treatment for pests.
25. Weeds? Spot-spray with common full-strength household vinegar, on a sunny day. It's an organic weed killer that's safe for you and the environment.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's own lab testing reveals that even after washing, some fruits and vegetables consistently carry much higher levels of pesticide residue than others. Based on an analysis of more than 100,000 U.S. government pesticide test results, researchers at the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a research and advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C., have developed the "dirty dozen" fruits and vegetables, above, that they say you should always buy organic if possible because their conventionally grown counterparts tend to be laden with pesticides.
The dirty dozen: Apples, bell peppers, celery, cherries, imported grapes, nectarines, peaches, pears, potatoes, red raspberries, spinach, and
strawberries.
Among fruits, nectarines had the highest percentage testing positive for pesticide residue. Peaches and red raspberries had the most pesticides (nine) on a single sample.
Among vegetables, celery and spinach most often carried pesticides, with spinach having the highest number (10) on a single sample.
For more information on pesticide levels for other types of produce, go to:
www.foodnews.org
WHATS ON MY FOOD
This website lets you search on food items and find out how much pesticides are sprayed on the non organic versions of these foods:
http://www.whatsonmyfood.org/
Here are some pesticide facts for non organic foods:
*The average child gets 5+ servings of pesticides in their food and water each day.
*The pesticide Atrazine is so toxic it is banned in Europe, but it is used so widely in the U.S., that it is found in 71% of the U.S. drinking water.
*Currently, over 400 pesticides can be legally used in the U.S. For example, apples can be sprayed up to 16 times with 36 different pesticides. None of these chemicals are present in organic foods.
Deconstructing Dinner
This wonderful radio show features information on all kinds of food issues. Share Organics is proud to sponsor this program.
Check it out at Village 900 on your am dial Sunday and Mondays at 6 PM.
See the report on the Farm Rally in Victoria in the archived programs on the web site.
http://kootenaycoopradio.com/deconstructingdinner/
Thank you for shopping with Share Organics!
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