Many organic farmers are hopping mad right now at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and their reason involves perhaps the most under-appreciated part of agriculture: plant food, aka fertilizer. Specifically, the FDA, as part of its overhaul of food safety regulations, wants to limit the use of animal manure.
"We think of it as the best thing in the world," says organic farmer Jim Crawford, "and they think of it as toxic and nasty and disgusting."
Every highly productive farmer depends on fertilizer. But organic farmers are practically obsessive about it, because they've renounced industrial sources of nutrients.
So on this crisp fall morning, Crawford is practically rhapsodic as he watches his field manager, Pearl Wetherall, spread manure across a field where cabbage grew last summer.
"All that green material — that cover crop and the cabbage — all mixed up with that nice black manure that's just rich and full of good microrganisms, and we're going to get a wonderful fertility situation for next spring here," he says.
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