Local Sourcing

I was speaking today with a store manager here in the Midwest who noted that his store carries only local-source maple syrup. So he is not stocking the big brands.

Maple Valley is not among the biggest of brands — but we are undoubtedly bigger than the local syrup-producers in the region around that Indiana store.

I am wholly supportive of this local emphasis, even when it means the Maple Valley brand cannot find a place on the shelves of a store or two.

Organic Maple Co-op is founded on the notion that small-scale farmers matter, and that measures should be taken to help them succeed. If a small farmer has a local market, she or he should by all means capitalize upon it, and provide people with a product that is farmed, prepared, filtered and bottled nearby.

In recent decades, the whole-foods movement has begun to recognize the importance of local-emphasis ... despite the fact that the food-basket state, California, which has played so important a role in raising national awareness of whole foods and organic foods, would prefer to hold onto its status as the nation’s provider.

In the area of sustainable agriculture, the local emphasis is absolutely vital. Given the fact that our transportation system will undergo massive changes in coming decades, any system of food production or distribution that relies upon energy-intensive vehicles and upon the current transportation superstructure cannot be called truly sustainable.

This is a big-picture point of view — which is the point of view that interests me most.

At Organic Maple Co-op we are about to address the local-emphasis issue, for the region in which our blending-bottling plant is located. About that, I will have more to say ... before too long.

Cheers ...

Why organic ...

We were at the science fiction convention named Diversicon, in St. Paul, just over a week ago; and since conversations between friends at conventions go any-which-way (just as conversations between any friends anywhere have a tendency of doing), the topic of organic maple syrup came up.

One evening, Claudia, who for years has been a conspicuous supporter of my occasional excursions into ink-and-watercolor artwork, told Martha and me what she had been told, once upon a time: which is that all maple syrup is organic.

Well, yes ... such a statement might be made. Trees are trees, and sap is sap; and the use of synthetic herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers is relatively uncommon in the sugarbush. So on the face of it, “organic” might seem an appropriate word to use.

“Organic” is an elusive term. For decades, now, people interested in sustainable agriculture have been striving to define “organic” in special terms, even while corporate-industrial food representatives have been striving to undermine those terms.

These corporate-industrial food reps would love for all maple syrup to be ranked as organic. In general, they will encourage any perspective that helps them undercut the efforts of the true, soil-friendly agriculturalists of our time.

In the realm of sustainable agriculture, however, a process of certification for farmers has arisen, which creates a structure and puts strength behind the term. The structure is one that can be investigated, probed, questioned and analyzed.

In other words, it provides substance. “Organic” is a claim. Organic certification provides the substance that bolsters the claim.

“Organic” as a term, in other words, has come to signify more than a broad understanding of what is or is not “natural.”

Organic, in the realm of maple syrup, refers to the sugarbush. The woodlands being tapped must be treated in certain ways. Although certification requirements vary, among the various syrup-producing regions, it seems to be general that in order to gain certification, a woodland must not be a maple monoculture. The use of the land around the trees falls under some related restrictions. The farmer must observe practices meant to encourage not only woodland-ecosystem health but also individual-tree health – which usually means restrictions on numbers of taps, and against tapping trees too early in their lives.

Organic, as a term, also refers to how the food is handled. A bottling and distribution center for organic maple syrup must meet organic certification requirements.

Our own facility, for instance, meets such requirements; and we pursue some regular tasks out of the need to maintain our certification.

Facilities which handle regular, non-organic-certified maple syrup do not share our need to refrain from employing synthetic chemicals in matters dealing, for instance, with the cleaning of equipment, or with pest control.

As to be expected, at the science fiction convention, we mostly talked about matters other than organic food. Yet it was not an odd topic, for the weekend. Another friend, Greg Johnson, blogs about environmental issues, for instance, in addition to being a reviewer of new science fiction books.

Cheers ...