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Ahead of the organic curve

An apple grower says he transitioned his farm to organic 20 years ago at the request of consumers.

Jim Koan has been growing apples for more than 40 years near Flint, Michigan. He tells Brownfield when he joined the family farm in the 70’s the industry was changing.  “If I was going to stay in business, we had to plant a lot more trees per acre and technology was changing.”  He says Almar Orchard first started planting 100 apple trees per acre in the 1940s and that’s grown to more than a thousand per acre today.

Koan says as the farm started to use less chemicals, they found themselves on the path to becoming organic. He says before the USDA managed the certification program the local program wanted his farm to transition to 100 percent organic over 10 years.  “This was Organic Growers of Michigan that I was certifying with, and I said, ‘Give me my check back because I’m never going to be 100 percent organic.’  I just wanted to do this with one (apple) block, maybe.”   Koan says within that 10 year period he did become entirely organic, but it’s not for every farmer.  “It’s really high risk but it can be more fun because you really have to second guess what’s going to happen every year and you have to be proactive.”

Koan says now as an organic grower, his production goal is about 50 percent saleable apples instead of 90 percent and he’s diversified into value-added products.

AUDIO: Interview with Jim Koan