No one epitomizes the huge difference between rural organic-farming and urban organic-activism better than George Soros.
With the openly stated goal of undermining the American economy, Soros supports organizations that are devoted to undermining the North-American food economy, the most efficient food delivery system the world has ever known.
Sure, the North-American food economy is far from perfect. But as I traveled across North America inspecting family-run organic farms, I learned pretty quickly what most honest organic farmers seem to know intuitively: there’s no way we’re going to ever replace conventional farming. Improve upon it? You betcha’! But replace it? Never.
The very idea that we could, as Michael Pollan suggests, easily choose between different food systems is an example of what happens when people who’ve never worked a day on a farm receive more money than they know what to do with in the form of tax-exempt donations from rich benefactors who want to change the way you and your family live our lives.*
Chapter 2 of my book, Is It Organic? outlines the many organizations funded by Soros which claim to stand up for small, family organic farmers but which all stand idly by while over 80% of the certified organic food sold in the United States and Canada is imported from places like China, Mexico and Brazil.
The worst scam is when farmers are subsidized for converting to organic production, but every last cent they receive from your tax dollars passes through their hands and goes right into the coffers of urban organic activists whose only goal is to destroy the existing system, not foster the gradual growth of a healthy, domestic alternative system.
A few weeks ago I called out Mark Kastel and his Cornucopia Institute, along with George Siemon and his Organic Valley Family of Farms Brand, for pretending to stand up for family organic farmers. They both attack large players in the organic food chain for no other reason than that they’re large, but they do nothing to actually help organic farmers.
Do they support the replacement of all the useless paperwork with a single annual field test? Nope.
Do they support the reduction of certification fees and onerous Royalty fees that organic farmers are forced to pay year after year to their urban masters? Nope.
People like Kastel, Siemon and Soros won’t ever support such commonsense notions because, at the end of the day, keeping such inequities built into the system are what keep them in business. And it doesn’t bother activists like Kastel, Siemon and Soros that domestic organic farm revenues have basically flat-lined over the last decade while organic retail sales have soared by an average of 20-%-per-annum.
Lastly, and most important of all, it’s quite telling that instead of responding to any of the points I made (which are posted on this website), Kastel and some of Siemon’s supporters chose instead to threaten a lawsuit.
Nice work Kastel, Siemon and Soros. You have managed to take something that is good, honest and wholesome and build your own personal empires upon it. And, at the end of the day, you don’t even care if the food consumers pay a premium for is really organic or not, do you? All you care about is that your political messages sell. And that hurts domestic farmers.
