Wearing sturdy hiking boots and carrying notebooks and cameras,
a group of over 100 organic food advocates from all over the
country descended upon San Benito County Wednesday to network,
visit local farms and learn innovative techniques about organic
farming.
Hollister – Wearing sturdy hiking boots and carrying notebooks and cameras, a group of over 100 organic food advocates from all over the country descended upon San Benito County Wednesday to network, visit local farms and learn innovative techniques about organic farming.
“The personal connections you make here are important,” said Andru Moshe, a local food buyer at the Sacramento Natural Foods Cooperative. “It is a place where ideas are born and every year you move closer to what the movement is trying to accomplish.”
The movement Moshe refers to is organic farming, which has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years. For over a decade, organic produce sales have been increasing by 20 percent around the country as more people become familiar with what exactly “organic” means. Today, even mainstream stores like Safeway and Nob Hill carry small sections of organic produce, a testament to their increased popularity.
For 25 years, the tour – part of a four-day conference put on by the Ecological Farming Association – has been the largest gathering of organic farmers in the country. Over time, it has branched out to include organic distributors, cooks and agriculture students all eager to learn the latest trends of the business.
“For me, this creates a better sense of where the food I eat and cook with comes from,” said Chie Okazaki, a chef at Pebble Beach’s The Lodge.
The conference is the brainchild of Amigo Cantisano, a farm advisor in Nevada County who is also a small-scale vegetable farmer. When the conference started in 1980, only 40 people attended. This weekend, 1,600 visitors are expected to crowd into Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, where they will attend workshops, sample organic produce and wine and network with farmers from as far away as Africa and Central America.
“We started this because there was no mechanism for farmers to get together and share information and talk about common problems,” said Cantisano.
One common concern among organic farmers is how to protect their crops from pests without using chemicals. Paul Hain, whose organic walnut orchard and poultry ranch were included in the tour, shared stories about spraying trees with garlic to protect them from the husk fly as well as using a naturally occurring bacteria, a concept that many on the tour had not heard of.
He also described his chicken coops on wheels which are moved to a fresh patch of grass each day, while many in the audience furiously scribbled notes and took photos of them.
Annie Dunhan, who works for Veritable Vegetable, an organic distributor in San Francisco, said she relished the opportunity to see firsthand the origins of much of the company’s produce.
“I love it,” she said. “Any chance I get to get outside and see the farms where our products come from is wonderful.”
Among San Benito County farms Veritable Vegetable buys from include Coke Farms and Michael Halperin, whose farms the tour also visited.
Another big theme that ran through the minds of many visitors is what small-scale farmers can do to stay competitive at a day and age when large businesses such as Driscoll’s and Earthbound Farms are eating up a growing portion of organic sales. Many attendees said that they believed that small farms were truer to what organic farming was about and better for people, natural resources and the environment in the long run.
“Commercial farming is very exhaustive on both land and people…and I just think that fresh produce from a local farm is the best way to sustain organic farming,” said Andy Parker, a visitor from Portland, Ore. that works for a non-profit research and education organization.
Although organic produce can be more expensive, people can keep costs down by buying from direct sources such as local farms and at farmers’ markets because it tastes better, he said. Parker also suggested that people talk to produce managers to encourage them to carry a wider selection of organic produce at local stores.
Karina Ioffee covers education for the Free Lance. Reach her at (831)637-5566 ext. 335 or
ki*****@fr***********.com
