Why organic?

Q: Talk about your motivation for organic farming.

Lindholm: I’m very concerned about the state of the environment and environmental degradation. That’s not to say that all organic farmers are better caretakers of the earth or better farmers, because that’s not true. There are a lot of bad organic farmers, and there are a lot of very good non-organic farmers.

But I don’t see any need to use or rely on conventional chemical agriculture to produce food. Healthy food is essential for healthy life, and that goes for the planet, as well as for humans, as well as for animals. It’s a kind of very delicate web which I don’t even pretend to understand. And, as I was saying, the soil life is the most important part of it all, and just dumping a lot of chemicals on soil, then you don’t have any soil life.

It certainly is a challenging way to make a living and I don’t pretend like I’m trying to feed the world — I know I couldn’t. But if there was enough ground and enough people willing to farm like I do, I think we could feed the world.

I like doing my small part in making the world a better place and being able to make a living doing it. That’s how I get up in the morning and say, “OK, I feel good about this.”