Organic Farming Part 2

Organic Farming Part 2. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Organic farming is becoming more mainstream. In fact a visit to most grocery stores will feature entire sections devoted to organically grown produce when just a few short years ago most was considered kind of a novelty and relegated to the health food sections. Debbie Abrahamson, with Northwest Organic Farms in western Oregon has seen their business grow exponentially in the last couple of years. ABRAHAMSON: It has grown tremendously. (laughs) We're trying to figure out how to deal with the growth pains actually at this point but I don't have a number really of – I mean it's probably quadrupled since we started. And that was only about 7 years ago. Northwest Organic Farms provides clean, organic starts of staple vegetables like tomato plants. But also lends a helping hand through CSA's or community supported agriculture. ABRAHAMSON: We have a waiting list for CSA's and we've changed that a bit this year where we're really trying to help the community. The community aspect of farming is really a high value that I have and we've seen a lot of people in our area who can't afford organic produce who really are in need of that so we've tried to start more community farms and then have kind of a share basis rather than having to pay for their CSA basket. Trading is something that many communities are beginning to implement and they are seeing a very high success rate. My wife can grow great tomatoes but not so good at green peppers so we would find someone who had a lot of peppers and would like to have some tomatoes. Abrahamsen admits that going organic has its downside. ABRAHAMSON: It's a lot of work and we've run into different things that all farmers run into as far as crop loss and so I think just being educated in what you can use and should not use. Just building that base that you have to feed the soil and not the plant and you have to look at the long term goals in farming. Competing with farms that are only looking at the short term, year to year yield is difficult for the organic producer. The upside for Abrahamsen is that community aspect and that includes open farm days where they invite people to come and see the operation and meet the people responsible. ABRAHAMSON: We really have a large volunteer base of people that just want to come in and work along side of us and either want to learn so they can go do those things and practice those things or just o support the farm and we also do trading in that way too. I think every farm hits a point where they need to look at where they're going and how to adjust to those things. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.