Sustainable Pantry Cooking Blog. Who owns organics? Institute » Blog Archive » ‘Evangelist’ for Organics Going Ag. The New York Times By ALLISON WINTER of Greenwire SIOUX CITY, Iowa — In the midst of sprawling corn and soybean fields, industrial animal-processing plants and ethanol refineries, Woodbury County is charting an unusual course.
It’s trying to go whole-hog into organic agriculture. “This is a totally new direction for us,” said Debi Durham, president and CEO of the Siouxland Chamber of Commerce. “We are an agribusiness economy, but there is room for an alternative lifestyle.” Durham added, “Within the next 10 years, we will be known as the organic capital — of the world.” Such a prediction is almost mind-boggling, considering that the county had not one registered acre of organic farmland in the 2007 U.S. The area has moved slightly toward organics since then. By packaging tax incentives for organic farmers with aggressive promotion of locally grown food, Marqusee is trying to use family farming as an economic engine for shuttered stores on Main Street and shriveled rural school districts.
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