Dave Chapman takes the stage at "Real Organic: A World Movement" held in the Round Barn at Abby Rockefeller's Churchtown Dairy outside of Hudson, NY on Sept 28, 2024: https://realorganicproject.org/events...

Dave was joined by farmers and activists from around the US and beyond to discuss the path forward for protecting organic from industrial co-opting.

Dave Chapman 0:01
I'm introducing the next speaker, which is me.

Dave Chapman 0:06
I'm Dave, and the next thing I want to talk about is gratitude. I'm going to read this because it's a little too long and I would forget, but these are the people that we need to thank. Real Organic exists only through the generosity of all of you. And we made the decision when we started the Real Organic Project, and we decided that we would have a certification program, and we really decided that the farmers were already carrying too many burdens on their backs, and so we would make this free.

Dave Chapman 0:53
Now you'll hear later from Paul Holmbeck how in Denmark the government pays for this, right? It's free. The citizens pay for it through the government. Well, we weren't able to get our government to pay for it, so we're working on it, but in the meantime, we have to turn directly to the citizens and cut out the middleman. So through the generosity of hundreds of people, we are able to certify farms for free and and keep our team going.

Dave Chapman 1:29
But I want in particular to thank Abby Rockefeller and the Churchtown Dairy and maybe hold your applause, because we want to thank everybody. David and Doug Hollenbeck at the Latner Foundation, Robert Edmiston at the Meshewa Farm Foundation, Mark and Christine at Gaia, Charlie and Leigh Merrinof at the Charleigh Foundation, Glenn Muir, Charlotte Metcalf, the Woodhouse Foundation, the Lintilac Foundation, the TomKat Foundation, Jane and Bill Stetson, Dr Bronners and three very generous anonymous donors. So, now you can thank them.

Dave Chapman 2:04
Yeah, one of those three very generous anonymous donors is genuinely anonymous. I have no idea who they are, and they sent us $100,000 this spring. And I know, I know. And Hugh Kent said, "Well, geez, Dave, now you have to be nice to everybody." So if I'm really nice to you, you know why; you might be the one secret Santa.

Dave Chapman 2:40
Okay, so I wanted to start with talking about something that Michael Pollan said in In Defense Of Food. This book, Michael has written very many significant things about food, and In Defense Of Food, he wrote a famous poem, or haiku, that went "eat food, not too much, mostly plants". Now I know that a few people in this audience will say, "What do you mean mostly plants? I'm a vegan. It should be all plants and other people here." Glenn, I don't know where you are, but you'd say, What do you mean? Mostly plants should be mostly meat, as long as it's grown in the right way, produced in the right way. So we'll say that there can be some debate on on the last one, but there's a beautiful thing, and it's only whatever 10 syllables, and it's easy to remember, and it's a pretty good guide.

Dave Chapman 3:41
There's a lot of depth there, but I have to disagree with Michael, because it should be added to that "mostly real organic." And I'm actually not joking about this, because if food is not grown organically at this point in time, it's mostly grown chemically, and it mostly has biocides on it or in it, and we can't ignore that or forget about it. So if we're talking about how we should eat and how we should encourage others to eat, we really want them to eat mostly organic food. And of course, if everybody did, the world would look totally different.

Dave Chapman 4:28
Mark Schatzker, I'm going to show a lot of pictures from our podcast, so anybody who doesn't know we have a podcast, and it comes out as a video and it comes out as an audio and we got, we've done about 200 episodes that are not quite all released yet, and they're pretty amazing. And I've gotten to talk to all kinds of really interesting people who are different faces of the organic movement. Organic isn't just about farming, and it's not just about how we grow the food, that is the heart of it, but it's how do we prepare the food, how do we sell the food, how do we buy the food? How do we work with a government that puts a tremendous amount of our money into influencing how the food is grown, and most of that money does not go towards organic, it goes towards chemicals.

Dave Chapman 5:25
And, you know, Mark Schatzker has really taught me a lot about ultraprocessed food, and it's not just about salt, fat and sugar, it's also about the additives that are used to create not not bliss, but craving. You know, "Bet you can't just eat one," right? That's a true slogan, and it's not an accident.