Organic growers in the Imperial Valley

elchrist

With the Imperial Valley's #1 industry being* agriculture, I'm curious if there are any farmers in the county strictly growing crop in an organic manner.

I have no clue how many farms exist in the valley, but I'm guessing it's definitely over 100. With that guess count, you'd think that there'd be at least one environmentally conscious farmer who's the black sheep of the flock.

Now I know there's no concrete proof that eating organic foods is better for your health, but I must admit organic food seems to taste better, at least psychologically. What organic farming does do is diminish the amount of pollution generated from chemical pesticides which potentially run off into waterways such as our beloved New River and ultimately into the Salton Sea.

Organic farming is also more expensive since it's not exactly mass production, so that is why you see market prices for these foods sometimes double the amount of "regular" fruits and vegetables. Basically, organic farming is a more costly process since they can't use the most efficient man-made products available to them, so I can see why locals wouldn't go green. It's old school farming.

ANYWAY... If there happens to be an organic farmer out here in the Imperial Valley, props to them for staying "independent." They're the indie punk rockers of ag.

On a side note, I do have some questions regarding local farming in general:

- How much, if any, of the local crop gets put into our local grocery stores/markets?

- With so much local ag, why don't we have a real farmers market on a weekly/monthly basis?

- Is local farming going away any time soon?

- What's the weirdest (foreign, exotic, etc.) crop being grown locally?

- Has there ever been a pesticide plane (the yellow ones) that kamikaze'd into a structure?

* At least it used to be. Seems like nowadays it's home building which are taking up all the existing fields.

451PC · Posted: 27 Jul 2006 10:41 AM Post subject:

I remember that many years ago (10+ years) there was huge publicity on a local criminal enviromental case. The case involved a local organic grower, the city of San Diego and a ruthless transport company.

The case stated that the local grower was using human waste to fertilize his organic crop in the Imperial Valley. The human waste was a by-product of the city of San Diego, who at the time was producing so much sludge at its waste water treatment plant that it was trucking it away, to an undisclosed location.

The investigation was led by a local prosecutor investigator who was very sharp, I met him as an instructor at IVC. The investigation was over several months long, and it took several years to convict the grower, SD and the transport company. The investigation had surveylance tapes that showed the truck at its origin point in the SD wate plant loading, then it followed it down the I-8 to local fields where the trucker would drive into fields and unload the truck while in motion, and returning to SD for more loads over the night, all of the loads where moved only at night.

The local grower was found guilty, and it was a local, yet major grower. The trucking company was found guilty of enviromental crimes, and it dissapeared. The City of SD was found guilty of not knowing where their waste was being disposed. So I dont know about the taste of organics, but I stay away. This made the national news and a national show like dateline, I cant remember which show it was.

clandestino