Obviously, Brian is getting more money for his honey than the average 
American beekeeper.  I also think it’s obvious that the quality of his 
honey is better than average.  

As an aside, I don’t mean to dispute Bill’s statement that tests of organic 
and non-organic honey have shown no differences at all, but I don’t think 
we should limit our definition of quality to what we can prove in a lab.  
Moreover, I think any definition of “quality” that only looks at the end-
product will be self-defeating.  In other words, I think our definition 
of “quality” needs to take into account what the production of the honey 
has done to the beekeeper, to the land, to the community, to the suppliers 
and laborers, and even to spotted owls and the other “global” issues of the 
organic left field.  The problem with the left field is not that they 
consider how things impact spotted owls, but that they give more weight to 
the needs of spotted owls than to their neighbors.  All this to say that 
it’s in this holistic sense that I say the quality of Brian’s honey is 
better.

As another aside, I also don’t mean to dispute the claims of dishonest 
marketing and behind the scenes cheating.  I can see that from the 
customer’s perspective, looking at a jar of honey on a shelf in a suburban 
strip mall, an “organic claim” may have very little “organic substance.”  
And that’s a valid complaint, but I’d like to take our perspective, the 
beekeeper’s perspective, and we do know how we manage our own hives.

So to get back to Brian’s claim that the “sustainable” way to keep bees is 
to sell high dollar (very high dollar) honey to suburbanites, I strongly 
object, despite the fact that he’s presumably making very good money while 
avoiding a number of objectionable “shortcuts” that a lot of other 
beekeepers take.  First of all, I don’t think we can say 
we’re “sustainable” and at the same time say: “whether a farmer buys my 
honey or not is of no concern to me.”  I asked before, what quality do 
suburbanites possess that farmers lack?  A couple answers I could suggest 
are ignorance and paranoia.  If Brian isn’t able to sell to farmers because 
they’re in more of a position to judge the real value of his product, then 
I’m seeing red flags.

A “sustainable” product, or in other words a “sustainably” produced 
product, is “sustainable” because it doesn’t come at anyone or anything 
else’s expense.  A sustainable product isn’t just a conversion of a 
depletable resource.  In other words, if the production of my corn requires 
washing my topsoil down the Mississippi (i.e. depleting it), then my corn 
production isn’t sustainable.  Or if my profits as a real 
estate “developer” come at the expense of ruining the countryside, then 
my “development” isn’t sustainable.  We can use things up/deplete them/mine 
them, and we can make money doing so, but to say we’re “sustainable” is to 
say that’s NOT how we’re doing things.

Likewise, it would not be sustainable for me to sell high dollar honey to 
suburbanites if my gain comes at their loss.  This gets back to my question 
about whether we, as beekeepers, would buy our own honey at our own prices 
if we were in different shoes.  If we wouldn’t, it seems obvious to me that 
the reason is that we know our honey isn’t really worth what we’re 
charging.  I’m not denying any claims of the under-exploited “market 
potential” of paranoid suburbanites with more money than they know what to 
do with, but let’s call a spade a spade.  Taking advantage of suburbanites’ 
ignorance and paranoia by convincing them that our honey is worth more than 
it is and thereby relieving them of their excess riches is 
not “sustainable.”

The big variable in all this that I’ve mostly avoided defining is what my 
or your honey is “really worth.”  Of course, we can’t answer that question 
objectively, but we should have some perspective on the question.  Brian 
said, “To me sustainable farming also includes the ability to make a decent 
living.  The idea that food should be cheap has been ruinous to our 
heritage and environment in this country.”  I very much agree that our low-
price mania with regards to food and everything else has been ruinous, but 
I wonder how sustainable a solution we really want.  If we’re not going to 
mass-produce things the cheap way, then we’re going to have less stuff.  
What we have may really be worth more, but there’s going to be less stuff.  
We can’t have our cake and eat it to, and if we think we can, then we’re 
probably eating somebody else’s cake.

I’m all for being sustainable, but when it comes to pricing 
our “sustainable honey,” we ought to also define “a decent living” 
according to sustainable standards, which will probably mean our “decent 
living” is more like our great-great-great-grandparents’ living than our 
current neighbors’ living.  We just need to be consistent, unless what we 
really are after is to get rich at somebody else’s expense.  In principle, 
I really agree with a lot of Brian’s thoughts, but I suspect he’s 
oversimplifying things.

Eric

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