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Thursday, 26 October 2006 |
With a population of 5.5
million and some 12,000 conventional farmers, Maryland has only 70
organic farmers. Here are several ideas concerning the welfare of the
industry:
The University of Maryland is a land-grant
university yet does practically nothing about either organic farming
or family farming. My goal would be to bring the University of
Maryland back to supporting family agriculture, an innovation which
might spark a renaissance in land-grant policies all over the
country. After all, the university is using public finds, so it
should focus on the public interest, not the private profit of
agribusiness.
The same applies with the black land-grant
universities, which ought to help black farmers who are going out of
business at twice the speed of white farmers. Turning black farmers
into organic farmers promises survival and a good living off the
land. Maryland ought to reform animal farms by limiting the size of
the animals under one roof and mandating that the animals have access
to pasture for all their lives. Such laws will effectively abolish
agribusiness and boost family farming with enormous benefits to the
environment, especially the Chesapeake Bay.
The state should
buy organic food for school and state cafeterias. That way, schools
learn something about food quality, and state spending on organic
food boosts the organic farmers of Maryland.
Maryland should
be declared a pesticides-free zone, funding the transition of all
Maryland farmers to organic farmering, a policy of enormous positive
consequences for both farm policy and public health. The University
of Maryland and the state of Maryland would then become a national
center for family agriculture and environmental and health policy.
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