Tim's Blog

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I was a fanatical dog owner until just over ten years ago. In 2000 I started travelling the world in my IFOAM job, and was unable to have a dog. I also had an unfenced peri-urban property, which made dog ownership difficult.

I consoled myself by having many doggy friends, some that would come to stay with me when their owner was away, or I could visit and take for a walk. Finally it got too much; I had to at least have a look at the local pound. Now I, or anyone familiar with my enthusiasm for dogs, could have guessed that I was going to return with a new pet, but my excuse to myself was to just have a look, see what was available, and consider my options.
I visited the Hahndorf pound, a private establishment with an excellent reputation. They don’t put dogs down there either. They keep them until they find a home.

The first dog I met was Ace, and eighteen month old black Labrador kelpie cross. He is jet black, with a very shiny coat. The sign said he was too boisterous for his elderly owner. Well he is not boisterous, but he is big and he can pull hard on the lead, and we don’t know how frail the owner was. It would have been a sad parting, as Ace is a lovely dog loaded with personality. I did not realize at first how traumatised Ace was, but as the weeks go by and his personality comes to the fore, I realise that he was actually quite disturbed.

Ace and I took to each other in the first minute. He is a cross between two reliable, intelligent breeds. Crossing is good for robust health. He had no obvious behaviour problems and is of a most trainable age and disposition.

Ace has become, like all the dogs I have owned, a ‘right by my side’ dog. He comes everywhere. In order to do this, he has to be very bright, patient, well behaved and calm. Ace fits the bill very well. In the four weeks I have owned him he has become a favourite at the Stirling Organic Market, where I have a coffee most mornings when in Adelaide. He is obviously devoted to me, and so smart it is scary.

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I have recently returned from a meeting of the committee of Standards Australia that overviews the Australian Standard for Organic and Biodynamic Products.

High level meetings of this nature always produce intense sentiment and dissent. Of course they do. At this forum we are dealing with the fine detail of our Standard, what we call organic and what we will exclude. Most of these issues will not be of supreme interest to the average consumer. Consumers will want to know only that there is an appropriate and considered process for arriving at consensus on important issues. Most industry participants are very happy to have such a thorough and soundly based process in place to be a forum for broad input. Most are also aware that disagreement is a reality of any standards setting process is that the diversity of opinions offered and debated is a sign of the health of the industry and long journey we embark upon to create and maintain a standard.

The AS6000 can be held up as an excellent standard on the world stage. It has yet to be tested (being very new) but it appears to most industry commentators to be a basis for establishing equivalence with any other existing standard including the CODEX (UN Food and Agriculture Organization), IFOAM and individual country standards.

The highly respected processes of Standards Australia have been complete, with a number of expert industry subcommittees and wide distribution through the organic industry, primarily led by the OFA and the various certification bodies. The Committee is the largest ever established by Standards Australia (SA). There were more responses to the period of public consultation than received in any other SA process.

It is therefore very disappointing to find that some members of subcommittees or working groups, selected for their technical expertise, are unable to accept the decisions of the main committee when the decision is at variance from the technical viewpoint. It is vital to consult industry experts and to consider their input but, in the end, technical information can also be disputed, informed as it is from different academic perspectives, and the technical viewpoint needs to be balanced against a broader range of views, including practical production experiences but also the expectations of consumers and a comparative analysis of the AS6000 against the other various standards on which world trade is based.

How disappointing then that a technical expert, who participated in a working group of the standard, is now unable to accept any decision that is at variance with their opinion. So unable are they to accept that these decisions are based on a very wide range of inputs from a broadly constituted committee representing the interests of all stakeholders including consumers, that they are threatening legal action.

Importantly discussion at the working party was open and frank. The objector spoke as much or more than any other participant.

The responsibility of SA Committees is to take into account the full range of views. The critical issue for most of us is what will protect the reputation of organic as the most environmentally friendly, socially responsible and humane production system, and especially, what do consumers expect from an organic standard.

Threats of legal action are incompatible with an open, frank and democratic process. If someone feels so strongly that they must threaten legal action, the appropriate process is to first remove themselves from the subcommittee. It is offensive to other open-minded, well-intentioned participants in this process to infer that the subcommittees are improperly constituted, when the objectors were leading contributors to the activities and discussion of the committee.

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In South Australia we have dry alkaline soils that tend to lock up phosphorus (P). The nutrient forms strong bonds with iron and aluminium, and stays in the soil but unavailable to plants. In lucky years when we have enough rain, any free P may be washed down through the soil profile, below the reach of surface roots.

The problem of P availability in alkaline soils is well known and agronomists have traditionally calculated P additions up to ten times the requirement of the crop to account for lockup. This meant that farmers were paying for a lot more phosphorus than they export from the paddock in produce, but super-phosphate was cheap and until the 1980’s it was subsidised.

I started reading about shortage of phosphorus supplies in The Ecologist magazine, but reports on short supply of P rarely made it into farming papers or magazines.

We have become familiar with the concept of peak oil, but what about  forecasts of "peak P".

Recent price increases for fertilisers have perhaps focused our attention a little on efficiency of use of P, but availability still rarely rates a mention.

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The term greenwash is derived from whitewash, meaning to hide, cover or conceal. It is about recognising and identifying misleading claims that companies or enterprises make to try to cash in on a feel-good attitude without really changing their way of doing business.

How much effort should businesses make before they claim to be environmentally friendly or socially just? Is it fair to make an organic claim on a t-shirt that has only 5 percent organic cotton or pants that have 50 percent organic fibre but also contain spandex? I encourage manufacturers to use organic and fair trade ingredients but I think they should be open and honest about their complete impact and they should be scrutinised for their claims. Making a selling point from 5 percent organic content does not stack up in my view. Companies make greenwash claims in an attempt shift responsibility for environmental responsibility from them to us (in the best case) and to fool us (in the worst case). Greenwash is part of a revolution in green information rather than green practice. They have hijacked environmental claims in an attempt to hijack our dollars.

Aware consumers should thoroughly evaluate the environmental and social justice claims of manufacturers and service providers. Here are some suggestions on how to do just that.

1. Look for blurbs that make claims without any substantiating evidence, such as organic or fair trade with no certification.
2. Be alert for pseudo-scientific claims or new terminology for environmentally responsible behaviour. They are very likely intended to obfuscate or confound consumers.
3. Beware of environmental claims on products that are inevitably harmful such as fuel or cars.
4. Be suspicious of claims that are too easily made, such as on blogs or websites, but which offer no substantiation.
   

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I spent some time in South Korea recently, attending the IFOAM Organic Asia Conference 2009. Organic appears to be alive and well in Asia and still expanding, although the global economic downturn may have reduced the rate of growth over previous years.

The conference was attended by representatives of the organic sector from China, Taiwan, Japan, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, India and Sri Lanka. Speakers included guests from UK and Germany (organic fibre), Italy (wine), Australia (cosmetics and climate change).

Both Andre Leu (Organic Federation of Australia Chairperson) and I (as OFA Deputy-Chair) spoke about climate change, and I also participated in the organic wine conference presentations. My presentations were popular because, as usual, we used many images of practical farming. My topic was organic farmer responses to climate change, and it was one of only a couple of presentations that were on farming rather than policy and theory, so it was well received. Marg Wills from OFC spoke on the topic of organic cosmetics, especially standards development.

The conference was in part a dress-rehearsal for the next (17th) IFOAM Organic World Congress, to be held in South Korea in September 2011. It will be the first OWC to be held in Asia. The Koreans did an exceptional job organising the recent event, and the WC should be a great success.

Korea does have a 5,000 year history of agriculture, characterised by paddy rice, but in reality quite diverse and productive. The government has some pro-organic policies, although it also has some disputes. While we were in Korea there were protests from a group of early-adopters of organic farming. The government was proposing to acquire their land as part of a river beautification program. I don’t know about beautification, but from my limited view of the countryside I would say they do need some erosion and sedimentation control programs on Korean rivers.

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At last we have an organic standard with some real relevance to the domestic marketplace. It represents the culmination of over 20 years effort by the organic industry. I personally was first involved in an approach to the Federal Government with a request for a standard in 1989.

The new AS 6000 from Standards Australia also represents the result of nearly five years of intensive lobbying and commitment from the Organic Federation of Australia (OFA).

Until now the ‘default’ key industry document has been the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) Standard for Organic and Biodynamic Produce, which only had authority for export. Problems with a lack of definition arose during several court cases, where the judges found that they could not use the private (certifier) standard or the export standard.

Although the AS6000 is a voluntary standard, it does recommend certification as the ‘norm’ within organic marketing, and the courts and ACCC will use it as a definition.

Several court cases or ACCC actions have been won in recent years, to the benefit of consumers, but only where the offending companies had breached other obligations, such as misrepresenting contents on the label or misusing a certifiers logo, AS 6000 will permit consumer authorities and individuals to take action based on a core definition of what organic really is. It will stop people from claiming that they are organic even though they use urea, glyphosate or GMOs.

The organic industry is already a $600 million-a-year industry in Australia, but this standard should boost the confidence of consumers, growers, processors and exporters and give organic business a significant boost towards reaching one billion dollars of turnover.

Consumers are currently faced with eight different organic certification schemes, with different labels and grower requirements, and some non-certified products that claim to be organic. In the aftermath of AS 6000, the OFA will promote a single national organic logo to appear alongside the certifier’s logo, and reassure consumers that the goods meet the key standard for the industry.

The standard is available for the cost of $87 from the Standards Australia/SAI website. While the cost is high (the AQIS and certifier standards are available for free as a download) individual growers do not need to possess the standard. Certified operators only require their certifiers standard, which in most cases will remain available for free from the certifiers website.

In the meantime we are astounded to hear that some certifiers are claiming they will not use the AS 6000 and will stick with the old AQIS document. After years of fighting for it, we finally have a single standard with applicability to the domestic and export market, and the opportunity to present a simple, plain language document that anyone can read and interpret. Why would we not get behind a single unifying standard?

If you belong to one of these organizations I encourage you to ask your certifier to explain in detail what they have to loose from supporting AS 6000.

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I have been creating a new garden. It will be the largest garden I have had in many years, in fact for a decade. Prior to that, I was almost self-sufficient for vegies and fruit for much of the year, either from produce I grew or from swaps between myself and other gardeners and farmers in my network.

The new garden is built largely for photography purposes, part of a publishing project I will be working on for the next 18 months or so. So it has to look good, but it will also be productive.

It has been a lot of work so far. The area was completely covered in Watsonia and blackberry, with just a few spaces left for some periwinkle (Vinca major).

I have been thinking a lot about weeds as I work my way into the patch; partly die to the immediate task, but also because my current writing project is a book on organic weed control. I have also been thinking about what to grow in the new garden.

Some crops will be determined by my requirement for photographs. Apart from that, how does one decide what to plant? I think there are several obvious alternatives.

I could go for any of the following strategies:

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Surprise, surprise. Today’s rural press contains reports based on a media release from the Australian Egg Corporation that one in six claims for free-range eggs are false. It seems that there just are not enough free-range chickens in the country to produce the number if eggs sold.

It seems that total egg production has fallen over the last few years, from 3 billion to 2,8 billion, but that the number of free range eggs sold has increased from 811 million to 971 million. It would require 1,22 million free-range hens to produce this number of eggs, a far greater number than the industry can justify.

I draw two conclusions from this report, apart from the obvious one that some one is telling ‘porkies’ about the chickens and that the claims are nothing more than some ‘creative’ marketing ploy to lift egg sales.

The first conclusion is that one of the greatest assets of the organic industry is our long-proven and well-respected certification scheme. We may get frustrated and annoyed by the bureaucracy and recording obligations of organic certification, but it underlies the significant consumer trust we enjoy and the premiums we obtain for our genuine organic produce. As I sometimes say, we need it just like we need local government (or any level of government for that matter). We may get annoyed and frustrated by local government bureaucrats too, but in the end, we need someone to collect the garbage and control stray dogs.

The second conclusion has to be that there is much more room for egg producers to convert to organic. Despite the frequent media claims from egg producers that they are doing their best, that they cannot afford to provide more space for birds and that their system is ‘humane’, it is clear that there are many consumers out there who will support ethical industries and “put their money where their mouth is” for high quality organic food.

I try to eat organic whenever possible but I do have to make compromises from time to time, especially given my intense travel agenda, however in the Marshall household there are two very firm rules of engagement for the thrice-daily ‘fork to mouth’ routine – I ONLY eat organic eggs and I ONLY eat organic broccoli. Broccoli, you say, why broccoli?

Well when I meet the Department of Agriculture executives who try to convince me that they have changed their ways, that they don’t recommend willy-nilly use of chemicals, that IPM is the norm for all their recommendations, I have one reply, “go and look at your Brassica fact sheets”. It is one area where the old recommendation, “spray at 14 days old and spray every 14 days thereafter still persists”. I recently found a media story from New Zealand where a commercial broccoli producer refused to allow a local home gardener access to his green waste on the basis of the risk of chemical contamination. He said he would not eat his own broccoli, destined for export markets only. That is pretty damning evidence.

For your information, we have included below the rules that the non-organic egg producers SHOULD be complying with.

CAGE

• Birds continuously housed in cages in a shed, with a minimum floor space of 550 sq cm per bird.
• Beak-trimming permitted.

BARN

• Birds continuously housed indoors but free to roam within the shed, which may have several levels.
• Stocking capacity not to exceed 14 birds a square metre.
• Beak-trimming permitted.

FREE RANGE (Egg Corporation and Primary Industries standing committee)

• Housed in sheds with access to an outdoor range.
• Stocking capacity within shed not to exceed 14 birds a square metre.
• Maximum 1500 birds a hectare.
• Beak-trimming permitted.

FREE RANGE (Free Range Egg and Poultry Association of Australia)

• Unrestricted access to free-range run during daylight hours.
• Stocking capacity within shed not to exceed seven birds a sq m.
• Maximum 750 birds a hectare.
• Beak-trimming prohibited, as deemed unnecessary if above housing conditions are adhered to.

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I am just back again from Tasmania, my fourth trip in just over a year. Yes, we do travel a great deal and burning all that fuel and adding more CO2 and other pollutants to the atmosphere could be a problem, except for the following:

• I always by carbon offsets
• I have spent much of my life working in carbon-positive farm forestry, quarry rehabilitation and large-scale or on-farm revegetation projects
• Much of our work at TM Organics is convincing people or training them to adopt organic practices – with very positive outcomes for soil carbon sequestration, reduction in use of energy dense farm inputs
• Other aspects of my life are organised around a fairly non-consumptive, low impact, self-sufficient lifestyle

In Tasmania I was again greatly impressed by the natural environment and abundant water. Indeed 2009 was the wettest winter on record!

I was even more impressed over the last few visits to see that home vegetable gardening and small scale commercial gardening skills are alive and well in Tasmania. Interest in home vegetable, fruit and herb production is growing again around Australia and the world, but the art and science of small-scale production is never better than in Tasmania.

Several reasons come to mind.

• Tasmania does have an excellent climate for gardening. Yes winters can be cold, especially in the hilly country, but many parts of Tasmania are also moderated by maritime proximity. Also the 41st parallel of longitude is well recognised around the world (northern and southern hemisphere) as providing an excellent climate with a long frost-free and sunny growing period. In fact the lack of intensely hot summers does not severely limit gardening, other than restricting the potential for subtropical crops such as bananas.

• Perhaps because of the first point, Tasmania has a long history of keen gardeners and organic production, with top-notch producers and mentors. David Stephens and Peter Cundall spring to mind immediately, but there have been many others. Peter Abetz, Jonathan Sturm, Allen Gilbert Ian Cairns and a long list of other skilful gardeners have always delighted my on my visits to Tasmania, with their gardens that are not only productive but also highly ornamental and pleasing to the eye. Jon Sturm, by the way, is one of the few non-TMO staff who write for our website (see our horticulture and gardening stories).

• Also closely aligned to the points above, and in common with New Zealand, because of its clean air and rugged beauty, Tasmania has always attracted environmentally minded immigration. I can’t fail to connect a strong surge of environmental settlers to that nuclear-holocaust scare mongering faze of cinema that produced the film On The Beach. The film publicized the idea that Tasmania had some of the cleanest air – there being no landfall west of Tasmania until the southern tip of South America, and therefore would receive little radiation fallout in the event of a nuclear war. Building on this initial input, the reputation continued to grow. It explains in part why Tasmania and New Zealand were some of the first places in the world to have strong green parties with balance-of-power status in the parliament.

Check out the photos below of Steve Solomon’s garden to see what I mean by a productive and visually pleasing garden.

By the way, I have been contributing favourite titles from my vast collection of old-time organic garden and farming books to Steve’s online library website, www.soilandhealth.org - it is well worth a look.

 

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