OLO is now given to posting the thinly veiled rants of sales and business people spitting sour grapes because they couldnt get a sale.

These people might put their energy into improving their sales schtick and/or marketing spin.

This one is a classic... they dont want MY product therefore THEY have a problem.

Also, people are getting a bit weary of all this lean, mean and green organic spin. As a business owner, the gains are often marginal at best. Often they are more trouble than they're worth. And become little more tham poorly performing, thinly veiled marketing and advertising. Local paper adverts are much more effective.

In this green/organic area, you need to imbue this stuff with sentiments like 'ethics' with a heavy dose of faux guilt and latent shame and responsibility or whatever. BUT, people resent being coralled in such an obviously cynical way. And its getting to the point that no matter how you spin it, folks are just gonna reject it because they dont believe in it anymore.

And this article is all cynisicm. Its all motivated by self interest.

Now, if you were REALLY being honest and ethical, you would be telling people to NOT DRINK MILK. And to lay off the caffeine too. And to stop milling around cafes and restauraunts, wiling away the time, whilst CONSUMING, CONSUMING, CONSUMING. Which. lets face it is the root cause of mass-production, farming and food processing practices that pump out very large yields of food with sub-standard nutrional value. In fact so sub-standard, that foods are routinely fortified due to their lax nutrional content. "Empty Hydrocarbons" is what l like to call them.

You are fighting a fundamental conflict of your ethics versus your pusuit of money. The only ways to solve it are to lie to yourself about it or accept the irreconcileable conflict and do it anyway.

All the best. This is how business is... full of compromise.

Coming from a farm I wouldn't drink raw milk because of possible salmonella, this is despite cows being TB tested and in good healthy condition.

As a business owner I wouldn't sell raw milk because of the possibility of being sued if anyone fell ill. With pasteurised milk I have a guarantee of quality, a standard.

If a person wants raw milk in their coffee while out they are welcome to bring it with them in a vacuum flask. It would be very doubtful if the risks and inconvenience of supplying raw milk would be worth the trouble and adherents would be unlikely to pay a sufficient premium for it. Then there are those who would want it skim.

aw gee, trade. I love the stuff.

Raw milk is potentially dangerous. That is why pasteurization was invented.

http://www.cdc.gov/healthypets/cheesespotlight/cheese_spotlight.htm

There have been a number of deaths and illnesses in Washington State, US associated with raw milk http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5608a3.htm?s_cid=mm5608a3_e

Even in cow share operations.

Raw milk is not too dangerous taken straight from the teat, but storage gives the chance for disease organisms to build up.

http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2007/NEW01576.html

http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/rawmilk.html

http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~acrobat/milksafe.pdf

The author’s statements about pasteurization are wrong and easily refuted.

http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/2004/504_milk.html

The simple fact of the matter is that pasteurization is a well-established public health benefit with substantial scientific support. Now if we can just get over these anti-science accusations and back to the job of feeding people safely.

Yabby

As a farmer yourself you should know that artificial fertilizers mainly involve nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium without replacing other micronutrients or trace elements and they don't do much for soil structure. Also these fertilizers are spread at a higher rate than the plants need and ends up running off into water systems and create major pollution (including eutrophication).

I know from my own experience as an organic grower that soil nutured with compost, composted manure, rock dust, leaves, green manures, seaweed etc produces better vegetables.

A few years ago, an episode of ABCs Landline demonstrated farmers in Western Victoria using denser tree lines around their pastures benefited not only from the positive effects on soil erosion but on soil fertility from leaf litter. It was followed up later to see if the results were still evident and they were. A recent Landline episode featured a group of farmers in Young NSW producing high nutrient compost for those wishing to decrease the use of articifical fertilizers.

http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2006/s2240246.htm

I would ask you to keep an open mind Yabby, I know it is hard to change the habits of a lifetime and even harder to challenge ingrained methods and beliefs in agriculture but even farming methods can change and develop for a greater good. :)

*I would ask you to keep an open mind Yabby, I know it is hard to change the habits of a lifetime and
even harder to challenge ingrained methods and beliefs in agriculture but even farming methods can
change and develop for a greater good. :)*

Ok Pelican, I ask the same of you, but I also ask you to question voodoo agriculture
and at least accept that science can be of benefit for us to understand what we are doing. Sorry, but burying a cowhorn does not do it for me.

It seems to me that you are confusing bad farming practise with good farming practise and that in WA, we are actually a long way ahead of you, when it comes to broadscale
agriculture. Compost is great for your veggie patch, but not the best method, when it
comes to growing a 10’000 acre wheat crop for instance.

Good farming practise involves tissue testing etc and applying various nutrients, including micro nutrients. Organic matter levels, soil carbon levels etc, are in fact
rising with no till/deep till farming, as it was too much cultivation which destroyed
soil structure and organic matter levels in the first place.

Green manuring crops in some years works as well for those who also use bagged
fertiliser as those who don’t. The point is fertilisers are not “artificial”, some
forms are simply more concentrated then others. I admit that mistakes can be
made more easily with concentrates, so it is safer for dummies to stick to organics :)

If a farmer keeps applying more N,P or K, when in fact the plants are short on
zinc or copper, etc, that is simply bad farming, not the system which is flawed.