Dear Santy, Ollie again. I know some people think I�m a bit old for all this Santy stuff, but after last year, I can say with absolute conviction that I am a believer!
I mean, I wanted an overall majority for the Greens, and a Minister for as opposed to against the Environment. Now, I didn�t get the overall majority, but I did get a Green Minister in the Department of Ag with responsibility for organic, and a Green Environment minister.
And I wanted the Minister for as opposed to against the environment to at least watch the movie An Inconvenient Truth. Our new minister for the Environment met with Al Gore a few weeks back. I also asked for a dig out for the small organic growers. Fair play Santy, you really are a miracle worker.
And, while it�s tough for conventional farmers at the moment, with rising prices for all their agri-industrial inputs � the fertilizers, feeds, pesticides, fuel and all that, it just might encourage a few of them over to organic. Organic farmers� costs are also rising, but the playing field seems to be levelling a bit.
So it is with both hope and expectation that I�m writing this note to you. I feel a bit like the boy who has a fair bit and wants a fair bit more.
Anyway, the first one is fairly straight forward: I want the bits the Greens actually got into the programme for government to happen.
Especially 5% organic farming by 2012 and more support for farmers� markets. So if you could start working on that, Santy, great. I�d say the IOFGA manifesto is probably a good place to start, if you want to increase the organic acreage. There�s plenty of good advice in there; what�s more, I think the new Minister has already been listening to them. So, like most other kids these days, for me Christmas is just one big gift giving season.
You could add to his work by establishing a new organic development agency to kick start production, magic up a �20 million annual budget for the sector, encourage public institutions to provide organic food, and help out the tillage and horticulture sectors.
Minister Sargent, Santa�s little helper, has already done a bit for horticulture and tillage, but far more needs to be done.
He�s also started on the farmers� markets, but he really needs to start cracking the whip in a way befitting of a man with a double-barrelled authoritarian name; a minister and a sergeant.
He needs to get the county managers into a room, to tell them to tell their underlings to treat farmers� markets with the respect they deserve. And he needs to follow up on this by, with other Ministers like John Gormley, who has local government under his remit, setting local authorities targets to change their behaviour and attitude. In particular, all local authorities need to allow roadside advertising of farmers� markets. That way, you Rudolf and the rest of the Reindeers might actually find your way to one on your travels.
Here�s a real tough one for you now Santy: can you try to get some of our dusty old nutritionists to finally start accepting that, sometimes, organic food actually is more nutritious? What are they afraid of? There is so much recent research, especially into fruits, vegetables and milk, to suggest that it is more nutritious, that they�ll have to change their minds soon Santy.
In fact, if you could only stop them from trumpeting that ould broken record mantra �there is no evidence to suggest that organic food is more nutritious�, that�d be a start. It just keeps on popping up everywhere, so it does Santy, no matter what evidence comes out.
I know you have some sort of connection to Coca Cola Santy, which might colour your opinion, but even Coke are adding Green tea to a new product range of theirs, Diet Coke Plus. They advertise that this increases the antioxidants in the product, but really Santy, antioxidants are what all this new research is showing at higher levels in organic food.
So I�d recommend laying off the Coke Santy, and joining the reindeers in chompin on the organic carrots I�ve left out for you.
Yours in anticipation,
Dr. Ollie Moore
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