The Rural Voice, 2004-11, Page 2225 YEARS AGAINST THE GRAIN
As the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario marks its 25th
anniversarg, organic production continues to expand, but some pioneers
worrg the movement is in danger from its own success
Story by Keith Roulston
Ted Zettel recalls feeling
out of place when he
attended his first organic
farmers meeting back in 1983.
"I was a minority at the
time," the Chepstow -area
organic dairy producer recalls,
remembering that the majority
of people at meetings were
"hippies and hobby farmers".
"I was a Canadian farmer
and a commercial farmer. I
was surprised at the
composition of the crowds."
Zettel went on to become
one of the leaders of the
Ecological Farmers of Ontario,
then later was among those
who helped pioneer a separate
organic milk pool that saw
production of organic cheese,
then organic milk. As the
EFAO prepares to celebrate its
25th anniversary at a dinner in
Listowel, November 6, Zettel
was one of the group's early
leaders who recalled the early
days and spoke about the
different landscape for organic
production today.
Zettel started attending
meetings about the time
Lawrence and Mathilde
Andres of Tiverton had taken
over the reins of the almost -
defunct Natural Farmers
Association of Ontario which
had been started in 1979 by a
group of producers led by Herb
Eldridge. Eldridge had since
sold his farm and membership
in the organization had
dwindled to about 10, with a mailing list of 30-40 when the
Andres took over. Over the next few years membership
exploded as farmers from Ontario flocked to midwestern
Ontario which became the hub of organic inform-ation
exchange, especially for commercial -sized producers. By
the end of the first year membership reached 145. In the
next four or five years, membership reached 850.
It was new arrivals from Europe, bringing with them the
experience of commercial -scale organic production that
changed the picture and lured him into making the switch,
Lawrence Andres (above, left) chats at the 1992 Fall
Conference in Ethel with Peter Stonehouse, a University
of Guelph economist who spoke about his controversial
study claiming organic farmers made more money than
conventional farmers. Below, Shelly Paulocik of
Woodwinds Nursery talks to a visitor to the trade fair at
the same meeting. •
18 THE RURAL VOICE
at
Zettel remembers. The
mentorship of Andres, who
had arrived in 1978, and his
neighbour Bernard Hack were
keys to Zettel's successful
transition.
"EFAO was my lifeline
to the knowledge I needed and
the signpost I needed to get
through the transition," he
recalls.
There were a few
organic farmer pioneers in
Canada such as Alvin
Filsinger of Ayton, Dave
Reibling of Oak Manor Farms
in Tavistock and Tony and
Fran McQuail of Lucknow,
but Lawrence Andres says
there were only a handful of
organic farmers when he and
Mathilde arrived in 1978. It
was the arrival of Europeans
like himself, Hack and
Michael Schmidt of Durham
who set up full-time
commercial operations that
seemed to encourage more
family farmers like the Zettels
to make the leap of faith into
organic farming. People had
examples of commercially
viable organic farms, he says.
For many of the new
members it seemed the time
was right for a switch to
another kind of agriculture,
Andres speculates. It was a
time of the interest -rate crisis
in agriculture at the same time
as prices were failing and
some farmers wanted to look
a type of farming that would reduce input costs.
He recalls those as exciting days. He and Mathilde
headed the organization and created a magazine -style
newsletter and wrote all the address labels by hand in the
days before computers were common.
"We spent an amazing amount of time on that
organization," he recalls looking back. "We had such a
surge of energy it didn't seem like work. It felt like we had
wings."
In 1984, with the help of Bernard Hack and Michael