Organics in Georgia - the warm up to Vidalia Onions

Several months ago I was doing some research on organic agriculture in Georgia and came across some USDA data from 2005 on certified organic acres in each of the 50 states. I wasn't really surprised to find that Georgia is listed in the bottom ten states for the total number of certified organic acres. In fact 8 of the 10 states at the bottom of this list are in the southeast. However, when I looked at just organic vegetable acreage (you know vegetables are the most profitable and intensive crop type per acre) GA suddenly leaps into the top sixteen states.

Why is that I wondered? Here's a few theories, organic grains (row crops) and livestock take up a lot more acres than vegetables, and these two areas of the organic market just haven't caught on yet in this region. There's a good reason for this. Organic row crops are more difficult to grow in the south due to our poor soils (less organic matter) and high weed, insect and disease pressure.

Regarding organic livestock, most of the nation's organic livestock operations are located out west closer to where the organic grains are grown. Unfortunately organic livestock doesn't mean much more than the animals are fed organic feed, and they aren't given hormones or anitbiotics. Now these can be good things but there are no animal density requirements (in other words 100,000 chickens in a house is o.k.), and no pasture requirements. So rotational grazing livestock operations are now considered the more sustainable choice to organic grain fed livestock. Most of our grass fed beef and other grazing operations don't bother to get organic certification because unfortunately the organic standard for animals has mostly been conventionalized.

So that brings us to vegetables, the mack daddy of the organic movement. 42% of all sales in the certified organic market are fruits and vegetables. And Georgia is somehow nestled up at #16. Who is in front of us? Well, they are some large producers. Here's a countdown of the organic vegetable acres in each of the top 16 states (data from 2005):

Georgia	606
Texas	625
North Carolina	640
New Mexico	643
Minnesota	750
Pennsylvania	869
Wisconsin	928
Vermont	963
Colorado	1,957
Florida	2,140
New York	2,952
Arizona	3,639
Oregon	3,737
Virginia	4,859
Washington	10,331
California	58,327

In '05 there were 98,500 organic vegetable acres total in the nation. Now look at California. They possess more than half the total number of organic vegetable acres in the entire country.

Things are changing quick here in Georgia. Take a look at the six year growth rate in organic acreage. This is just those folks who are certified. There is no information on the number of growers who are growing organically but don't seek certification.

6-YEAR GROWTH	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008
Certified Organic Acres	273	413	665	1,076	1,565	1,799

Now that's some growth. Over 6-fold in five years! So what's being grown on all this acreage. I put in a call last week to Vernon Mullins, the Organic Program Manager for the Georgia Department of Agriculture to ask. Vernon is a wonderfully pleasant fellow, and I could tell he was disappointed that they hadn't tried to figure out the answer to this question before. In fact, he was uncertain if they even could figure it out. He said that when people send in their certification registration, they often just list Assorted Vegetables. Hmmmmm. (but on the paperwork for organic registration, farmers are actually required to submit info on Product Grown, Amount Grown (Quantity), Annual Gross Sales, and Acres in Organic Production - so there is an answer to this question somewhere) He did mention that the only certified animal operation is a 28,000 head layer operation somewhere down in south Georgia. That's a bunch of eggs. I wonder where those are being sold.

One thing is certain, one of the fastest growing segments of organics in Georgia is in Vidalia Onions.

But for that story you have to stay tuned, we're just getting warmed-up.....to the Vidalia Onion!

Maymester Begins

Dr. Carl Jordan's agroecology lab at the University of Georgia offers one of the only intensive courses in both the principles and the practice of organic agriculture offered in the state. This summer is the 5th year the course has been taught as a Maymester session. The course is entitled Organic Agriculture and the Ethics of Sustainability. It's an intensive course, with only 16 total meeting days. 16 students (both undergrads and grads) are participating.

Today was the first day. I'll be sitting in on as much of this course as possible and sharing some highlights here and there as time provides.

Today's guest lecturer was Paul Sutter, an associate professor of History at UGA. Paul is an Environmental Historian and gave the class a good foundation in the history of American agriculture, with specific insights into some of the regional differences in agricultural settlement.



Paul described the settlement of America as a search for arable land. He described the notion of extensive vs. intensive agriculture in which land was seen as a resource whose main value was short-lived fertility. Once this fertility declined it was abandoned for un-spent land. Agriculture in the west was of a migratory nature. He contrasted this with the type of agriculture that developed in the northeast, where continuous mobility was no longer an option. Here farmers had to develop methods to sustain fertility the best they could. One of the ways in which they could do this was using animals to concentrate fertility.

Paul had some interesting things to say about aesthetics and environmentalism. He described how most of our large national forests out west are in areas where there was little opportunity for agriculture. Our aesthetic ideal of nature was isolated from our working agricultural lands. They were put in two separate boxes and environmentalist rarely thought about the latter.

Take a listen to a small part of Paul's talk. I guess this is my first official podcast. Outdoor recording ain't no easy feat so forgive the planes and windnoise.

Enjoy

http://www.farmlandconservation.org/assets/podcasts/Extensive_sound_bite4.mp3

Or Click here

The Wonderful Fava Bean

Tonight's meal has inspired me. There are so many foods that most of us have never known. Greens and roots and beans and lettuces and crazy things that make one excited to be alive again, with an incredible sense of discovery and wonder. And yet, the joy is deepened that much more if we can see these plants come up out of the ground, and know something about how they are cared for, and the history of the species, and how it has been used by people in ancient, sometimes distant lands. When the taste lingers with a knowledge of these things, ah, the delicious sweetness of deep roots.

So I'll show a quick peek of tonight's delicious feast and then come back to this and add how these things are grown, where the varieties come from, how long in the field, are they easy or difficult to grow, harvest, wash, transport? How long do they last? How long is their season? What foods do they complement?

This is the very first meal of my life with the fava bean. Celia Barss at Woodland Gardens encouraged me to take some last week after working on harvest day. I was able to pick them with the crew. After a few minutes of picking I found that they come lose from the plant easiest when grabbed and lifted straight up. There may be some risk of damaging the stalk of the plant however.

Like asparagus they are an early spring delicacy. I found in Alice Water's cookbook on Vegetables a recipe for Chilled Fava Bean Soup that sounded tasty. To get to the bean can take some time. First you split the pod and pop out the light green pod. Then you parboil for one minute. Douse in cold water then use your thumb nail to split the pod and squeeze the bean out of this second pod. The inner bean is beautiful dark green. Rinse again and add to a pan with well sauteed onions and garlic (I used some fresh spring garlic) in olive oil. Cover with chicken stock until beans are tender. Add to a blender then add additional chicken stock until the desired consistency. Drizzle with fresh rosemary infused olive oil.

The second dish was a Gratin of Broccoli with Sauce Mornay. Simmer on low 1.25 cups milk with a quarter onion, nutmeg and bayleaf (I substituted rosemary). Separately make a roux with butter and flour. Add the milk and stir on low until creamy. Add a fine grated cheese. I used cheddar and parmesan. Boil broccoli, drain, mix into the sauce. Line a gratin dish (darn I should have used mine, would have made the picture look better) with butter, added toasted bread crumbs to the bottom, add gratin, put untoasted breadcrumbs and butter on top and bake at 425 for 20 mintues.

And Hoila! Radiohead's In Rainbows made for excellent cooking music. Then Bob Dylan's documentary, No Direction Home made for good Friday night entertainment while I ate.




Tomorrow after I take my car in for a new timing belt, water pump and fan clutch I'll be swinging over to the Morningside Market, Georgia's only year round organic farmer's market. I'll get some good pics of the spring harvest bounty and tell a little bit about what I know of these good friends.

Goodnight.