More free money from the taxpayers to the folks who charge 2-3 times as much for food as normal farms. You want organic, you should pay for it, not the taxpayers. End ALL Government grant programs today and balance the budget in a month.

The way I read it, these grants are to assist experienced farmers with making the transition to organic. These are not price support programs designed to create an artificially low priced market for commodities crops (corn, soy, etc...), the likes of which have driven many Maine farms out of business in favor of large scale consolidated operations in the mid-west and west. Rather, these are the akin to the proverb about teaching a man to fish. Once established, organic farms can make a positive contribution to the vitality, independence and diversity of our Maine economy because they rely more on local inputs from local farms and businesses (ex, animal manure fertilizer vs. chemical inputs), are better for the environment, and as many studies have shown, tend to grow food that is more nutritious for the eaters (us).

Ultimately, what this program is about is supporting local agriculture, and that's a good thing for Maine. A healthy agricultural sector is essential to the economic health of our state economy and to the physical health of our citizens. Maine's conventional and organic farms are not competing with each other as much as they are competing with growers in the mid-west, California, Mexico, South America and even New Zealand (where did your last apple come from?). I've heard it said that almost 90% of the money we spend on the food we eat leaves the state. Programs like this, that encourage the local capacity help keep more of that money in state.

All the pesticides that worked are illegal now so everyone has to go organic, like it or not. You would think that they would have delayed removing these products from the market until environmentally sound replacements were available. Growing organic isn't cheap either. You must buy black plastic or straw to cover between rows to keep bugs and weeds down (I wonder what all that plastic manufacturing does to the environment?), then you must buy row covers to keep the flying bugs under control, then you must use organic pesticides which decay in a day or two so they must be applied between midnight and morning when the bugs are active. Then you must purchase organic fertilizer which has much less nutritional value to the plants. Finally you put in expensive "green manure" seed in the fall or spring and leave it in the field for a year to revitalize the soil. While doing this you must have enough property to rotate crops, which we don't at our home. This is all wonderful but it's very expensive, very labor intensive, and the product doesn't taste any better. The cost of all this has pretty much ruined our home gardening efforts. We used to be able to save a couple of thousand a year growning our own veggies. Even when using effective fertilizers and pesticides it was still an incredible amount of labor and expense. The organic approach is more than we can handle and still grow a significant portion of our food.

Organic allows you to use plastic in the garden. Nothing says organic like a bunch of plastic flying around the fields and getting tilled under in the fall. The same people that are now saying we shouldn't buy water in plastic bottles think it's just fine to put plastic in and on the soil and then call it healthy food. Just another taxpayer scam like their silly climate change.

Although I feel like it is a good idea to try to be friendly to the environment the thing that jumps out at me most is the amount of money that is coming from the government. Do government grants have to be paid back? If not I'm against this. Our government doesn't have the money to be giving away at the cost of the rest of us paying it back in taxes.

Maybe another idea would be for the companies that are taking the money for this to get loans from the government or banks that will be paid back. Maybe the government could give them a reduced interest rate on the loan, but nothing is free. We do not have money to be giving away. If we had extra money we wouldn't be printing it everyday by the truckload and then going further in debt to China.

It seems so simple. No matter what party you are a member of please join me in holding the politicians accountable. It's not a democrat or republican problem. They just don't get it! We can't spend money we don't have! They work for us! It is our country!