In a raid last week, Port Organic Products Ltd. of Bakersfield, a major producer of fertilizer for California’s organic farmers, was searched. It is estimated they produced up to half of the liquid fertilizer used on California’s organic farms recently.

“Kern County records dating back to 2005 show Port Organic has stocked thousands of gallons of aqua ammonia, a common source of synthetic nitrogen.”

“The company’s fertilizers were ostensibly made from ground-up fish carcasses. But documents obtained by The Bee show that California Department of Food and Agriculture officials suspected the company of using synthetic nitrogen back in October 2007.”

“Port Organic is the latest in a series of fertilizer makers to be accused of passing off chemical fertilizers as organic.”

Why do they do it? It’s cheaper… and they’ve been able to get away with it for quite a while. “…synthetic nitrogen is as much as 20 times cheaper than approved nutrient sources such as ground-up fish and chicken feathers.” And it’s very difficult to detect with standard laboratory analyses.

Think this problem is limited to California? Doubtful. If it’s happening in California, it’s happening in other states. Not only that, but some of the spiked organic fertilizer is sold to other states. And food grown in California ends up on grocery shelves throughout the country.

The government has been allowing the industry to police itself – a practice that must have been taken from the “allowing the fox to guard the henhouse” model!

A Senate hearing will be held on Feb. 3 to look into the Department of Food and Agriculture’s slow responses. Maybe in a few years, they’ll come up with a solution… but then again, maybe not.

In the meantime, grow as much as you can yourself or find organic farmers at local farmer’s markets and visit their farms to see how they run their farms (I’ve done that a few times).

We have local llama and ostrich farms that practically give away as much poop farmers or home gardeners can shovel into a truck. Chicken manure is also great if the chickens are free range and eat naturally. Horse and cow manure has to sit a season before use or it will burn your plants.

Generally speaking, chicken and ostrich manure, bat guana or llama or rabbit poop is prefered to horse or cow manure.

Read full Sacramento Bee article: “Federal raid heightens concerns about fake organic fertilizer”

In the article entitled, “Organic Farms Unknowingly Used A Synthetic Fertilizer” by Jim Downing, the Sacramento Bee reports:“For up to seven years, California Liquid Fertilizer sold what seemed to be an organic farmer’s dream, brewed from fish and chicken feathers.

The company’s fertilizer was effective, inexpensive and approved by organic regulators. By 2006, it held as much as a third of the market in California.

But a state investigation caught the Salinas-area company spiking its product with ammonium sulfate, a synthetic fertilizer banned from organic farms.”

That meant that much of California’s 2006 harvest of what was supposed to be organic fruits, nuts and vegetables wasn’t organic at all.  The fertilizer went to some of the biggest farms, including Earthbound Farm.
 
Although the Sacramento Bee notified the California Department of Food and Agriculture as early as June 2004 of their findings, the company wasn’t ordered to remove it’s counterfeit product from the organic market until January of 2007.

Hmm, it doesn’t seem like the California Department of Food and Agriculture is terribly interested in organic food violations….

Read full article: 
http://www.sacbee.com/capitolandcalifornia/story/1501772.html

How many other organic farms are using synthetic fertilizer that’s falsely labeled organic?  How much has landed on your table?