What is Organic?

Most organic tomatoes are sprayed regularly with copper sulfate, to prevent plant diseases. Our tomatoes are never sprayed with anything! Tomato plants are prone to a lot of diseases and fungi, but I've found that spacing the plants farther apart makes a huge difference, and we get a good tomato crop every year with no spraying. We have 10 feet between rows of plants instead of the typical 3-6 feet. I've never found another farm that does this, and I've evangelized this to many other farmers over the years (all of whom spray copper) but I only get raised eyebrows.

Spraying copper (it's ground into a blue powder which is then mixed with water and usually another powdered chemical called a "sticker" so it stays on longer, and it turns the plants bright blue for a while) is a practice that goes back to the late 1800s, starting with vineyards in France, where it was called the "Bordeaux mixture." Copper is used on many other crops besides tomatoes, and is allowed in organic agriculture because it's considered a "natural" rather than a "synthetic" spray. This is what most of the organic regulations are based on, a somewhat arbitrary distinction in my opinion, rather than considering health effects or environmental impacts. The natural/synthetic division does have the effect of barring the majority of agricultural chemicals, which is great, but I don't personally think it's the best basis for deciding what should be allowed, since it's kind of a subjective distinction. Is copper sulfate bad for health or the environment? That's a question with a range of answers which I'm not qualified to answer, but I just sidestep it by avoiding copper altogether. 

Sprays and organic regulations are a bigger topic than I can cover fully right now, but I'm happy to go into it more in the future if people are interested, and can answer questions any time (probably with a longer answer than you really want). I'll just remind everyone for now that Stone Soup is a 100% organic farm but we are not certified organic. We go well beyond what is required for certification, but don't do it officially because it's expensive and the record-keeping is a big pain (I did it for a couple years and it increased my office/computer time more than I could really handle). The fruit share is bought in from other farms and is organic whenever possible but usually isn't because I can't find enough organic fruit (fruit is way harder than veggies to grow organically). The fruit is always from small neighboring farmers who I know personally.