Organics reign for farmers at 3-day seminar

BETHEL – If by Saturday’s end Maine’s organic farmers weren’t convinced they were on the right track, Sunday’s speakers at the 18th annual Farmer-to-Farmer Conference sealed the deal.

Maine consumers for the first time are demanding organic products at a rate that outpaces production.

Two hundred farmers who specialize in everything from vegetables to flowers to miniature cows attended the three-day seminar sponsored by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association. Over the weekend, they heard about alternative energy, weed control, grants, and specialty topics such as goats and flowers.

Most were already optimistic about their future in organic farming, but hearing that the demand for locally grown organic food is outstripping Maine growers’ production really put the frosting on the cake.

“Organic has arrived,” asserted John Pino of Mooar Hill Farm in Mount Vernon.

Repeated scares involving contaminated food grown at out-of-state megafarms, including spinach, bagged salad, hamburgers and others, have pushed Maine consumers to take a closer look at local organic food, and they now are demanding it in record numbers.

“Amigo” Bob Cantisano, an organic crop adviser and farmer in California, said in his keynote address Sunday that organic producers were headed for success.

“You have a chance because people have taste buds,” Cantisano said. “They remember Grandma’s tomatoes. The true hope for agriculture is in this room: the organic farmer, the small-scale farmer, the farmer who markets directly to the consumer. You are the best thing going. I go to conventional agriculture meetings, and it’s like a funeral home there – all doom and gloom.”

Cantisano said that “conventional agriculture is hitting a wall, and most conventional farmers in California are going broke.”

Cantisano’s job is to teach conventional farmers to convert to organic. “One of my biggest clients is right now converting 25,000 acres,” he said.

During the MOFGA workshops over the weekend, Maine producers echoed Cantisano’s assessment.

“There is an amazing groundswell of interest in local food,” said Jim Cook of the Maine Organic Cooperative. “This has been a benchmark summer.”

Cook said that this year he delivered food to four schools. “That’s four more schools than we had last year,” he said. “In our first 10 years, we never had to ask farmers to increase their production. But for the past two years, the demand for local has outstripped the supply. I sold 500 pounds of garlic this year, and I could have sold 5,000 pounds.”

Farmers markets also have fueled the interest of the public. “The consumer wants to interact with the farmer,” Cook said. “That, in turn, increases the demand for products.”

Russell Libby, executive director of MOFGA, said there were 16 certified organic farms in Maine in 1985. “This year, MOFGA certified 350. We have a really dense local and organic food network,” Libby said. “But on the political level, organic and local food is still seen as marginal.”

Libby is a member of Maine’s Food Policy Council and has been working with others to create a new state food policy, for conventional and organic products. That process has revealed that for every $100 Mainers spend on food, only $4 goes to a local farmer.

Libby said an easier way to track the growth of local markets is to count calories. Today, about 20 percent of each Mainer’s calorie intake comes from within the state of Maine. “Half of that is milk and 10 percent is vegetables, seafood, eggs and beef,” Libby said.

Among all food products sold in Maine, milk, potatoes, eggs, dairy and blueberries are the only ones produced in Maine that outpace consumer demand. “Our goal is to be growing 80 percent of our calories in 10 to 20 years,” Libby said.

But there are obstacles, including the lack of diversity in Maine products and the inability of Maine farmers to put products on the shelves in a fashion customers want.

Ralph Caldwell, a Turner beef producer, said he is afraid consumers have moved away from “real” food.

“We sometimes do a sampling at a store, and we often use roast beef,” he said. “People love it and ask, ‘Where can we buy that?’ and we point to the meat case nearby. We get a blank stare. There is a whole generation out there that doesn’t know how to cook 3 pounds of meat into a roast.”

Several farmers said that educating their customers was a priority – sharing recipes and cooking ideas, storage tips and seasonal suggestions.

One farmers market has linked with area restaurants to have a Chef of the Day at the market. The chef cooks and provides samples, linking the market customers to both a local restaurant and the chef with what the market has to offer.

Others said television cooking shows and newspapers’ weekly food pages have become powerful tools. One farmer said that after fennel appeared on her local newspaper’s food page, she sold 50 bulbs of fennel in one day. “I didn’t sell a single one the week before,” she said.

Jane Livingston of the Maine Feeds Maine Project, which links farmers, said consumers also could help. Some suggestions were to offer bartering opportunities to local farmers, lobby the Legislature to create a charter school for agriculture, and spread the word about local farmers.

“In Japan, a customer in a grocery store can point a cell phone at the label on fresh food and a little video of that farm comes up on the screen,” Libby said.

“If we don’t tell our stories in many, many ways, we’ll get left by the side of the road.”