Former Board Presidents Steve Ela (left) and Ron Rosman chatted recently during an Iowa meeting of the OFRF Board of Directors.
Former Board Presidents Steve Ela (left) and Ron Rosman chatted recently during an Iowa meeting of the OFRF Board of Directors.
Steve Ela has tremendous hope for organic agriculture as an answer to the chemically-intensive farming that today dominates our food production system.
“In agriculture, I think we’ve gone through the chemical revolution where we could use DDT or some other materials to try to control pests and such. I think the next wave is going to be a biological wave, where we realize how rich our biological systems are, that we can utilize biological systems instead of chemical controls and that we can harness that richness to produce better food,” says Ela, a fourth generation fruit grower living in Hotchkiss, Colorado.
Ela caught the organic wave early. He began certifying his 100-acre orchard operation in 1994 and received farm-wide certification in 2002. He grows a diverse set of orchard crops from sweet cherries to peaches, plums, pears and apples. His marketing strategy is as diverse as his crops. He direct markets, processes some fruit, sells some fruit wholesale to retailers in his area and has a regional buyer in Whole Foods Market.
Ela is also a long-time board member at the Organic Farming Research Foundation where he served as president from 2004 to 2009. Ela will leave the board in early 2011, but he says his ten years of involvement provided him with a tremendous opportunity to participate in the evolution of organic farming and the implementation of the USDA certified organic label. In his view, the next important step for organic is to be clear about the many benefits that integrated organic farming systems provide.
“Organic plays an essential role in mitigating the negative external impacts that industrial agriculture imposes on the environment, our communities, and our health. It is often said that organic costs more, but if you really study the impacts of conventional systems – soil erosion, pesticide residues on our food and in our water, fertilizer run-off, and other negative effects – you realize that we pay to mitigate those problems through taxes and through exposure to harmful chemicals. I think the more organic can show that it reduces or eliminates those effects, the stronger the label will be,” says Ela. He adds that “people today are looking for healthful food, good food that they can enjoy, and organic can provide it.”
Ela predicts that agriculture will follow the good food trend and with organic food production in the forefront of that movement, the future for his farm and those of other organic producers remains bright.