Am I a Hydroponic Jew?

I am going to take the tiniest bite of this topic but it is huge. A few days ago I heard out of the corner of my ear that there was going to be a gathering in New Hampshire to address to issue, once again, of whether organic certification is appropriate for hydroponics.  Maybe that wasn't the actual topic, but that's what I heard.  When I first heard this question years ago, I didn't understand for a moment why this is even a point of discussion. To me it is blindingly clear -- hydroponics doesn't include soil and soil is the first building block, the very essence of organic farming. So the thought of including a system that feeds the plants through infusions of plant food in water confounds me. It is a twisting of words, a prostitution. Go find your own word, you hydroponics people.

The real issue is that we all don't agree on the philosophical and essential purpose/meaning of the term organic.  Back in the beginning of the movement, farmers learned and learned about the life in the soil and how it informs all that comes from it.  It was an organic process, the organic movement, but there was general agreement about its philosophical underpinnings.  Our farm took the step of getting certified when that became an option (thanks to Mom and Ellen, no thanks to me, in terms of the work that took).  In those days, inspections and certification were done by representative organizations in a state. Fellow farmers, usually, came to our farm and walked around the fields and smelled the soil and asked for our records and helped us make a plan for the next years. When it went to a federal standard, which was a long process, a lot of other voices got into the mix.  I am telling a story that everyone knows here, but the point is that the word organic had gained enough marketing cache that the bigger world wanted to be a part of the conversation.  In many ways, this is excellent. In other ways, it means that a larger blend of priorities gets into the discussion and rules get written that don't always express all the values.  Then the louder interests, the money people, get a bigger place at the table.

By the time the federal standards were established, our own marketing was solid enough that we made the painful choice to give up organic certification.  It felt wrong to lose the right to use that word. But we didn't want to be in the big system, it didn't help us enough.

So, technically, I shouldn't really care whether hydroponic farmers get to be certified organic. But it pisses me off.  Because there is a clear market for organic food and because a lot of small farmers spent a lot of lifetimes learning and establishing the science and practicalities of growing organically, now there is a new industry that is using all that momentum and shrinking the meaning of words so they can be in the club. They are following the letter but not the spirit of the law.  A bag of organic approved fertilizer is the answer, who needs to mess with compost and earthworms.  Most people have zero idea and they don't care that the lettuce they are eating has never touched soil. What difference does that make?  Well, I can't say for sure but everything I know tells me there is a huge piece of the puzzle missing.  All the life in the soil (and it is INCREDIBLE and UNKNOWABLE for the most part) is part of the whole picture, and when we bypass that because we are so clever, it is like we are choosing to feed ourselves with an IV tube instead of putting real food in our mouths and chewing it.

I have consistently voted against letting hydroponics into the Takoma Park Farmers Market and I make impassioned and unsophisticated speeches whenever an application comes up. I think I may have missed enough meetings recently that there may be one hydroponic grower in the market by now. I can't worry about that, but it's a slippery slope. The saving grace is that hydroponic growing is expensive and technical and easy to mess up in terms of finances but that is not germane to this topic.

Okay, so there is another community that has the same issue, from a different starting place and it affects me. I think I need to leave this for another day, but it is about who decides who is a Jew. Again, a very long story and I can live my life without being personally affected by the powers that decide whether I am actually Jewish enough to do thus and such. Maybe in this case it isn't a profit-driven issue, but the question is still: who gets to say what is real?  Why does someone in Israel get to decide that my Judaism is inauthentic and not good enough? 

Is this the same question as hydroponics from the other side?  Am I the hydroponic Jew?  Are the religious Jews in Israel the original organic growers and the Reform Jews in America the hydroponic growers?  Everything always comes down to marketing.  And belonging to the right club. And the power to self-identify.

This is an imprecise analogy but it bears some thinking. I will think on it some more. If someone else has thoughts, my couch is still open. And so is my inbox. As you can see, I have a lot of space in my mind right now for wide-ranging thoughts.

I had the best night of sleep since I first got this diagnosis, which tells me truly that I am mending.  I got to see the farm with my own eyes yesterday, and drive my golf cart (sitting on the passenger side and using my left foot so as not to unexpectedly anger my dagger wound) and I got to help Stephen assemble the market load (I watched, he lifted) last night. Anna had 17 people at the table last night for Family Dinner. In my own small world, life is truly wonderful.