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Interview with Tokya Dammond

By Juliet D. Golden
Photo: Konrad Stawicki
Date: January 29, 2001
Section: Interview

Tokya Dammond, chairman and founder of Symbio Impex Polska, a company that trains organic farmers, buys their products and markets them in Poland and abroad.

Q: Why is Poland so well-suited for the production of organic meat products?

A: Poland has green pasture (land) available that other countries just don't have. They don't have the ratio of free pasture per cow that Poland has. A lot of the information I am getting is that the West is interested in how much grain (Poland) can produce for (its) organic cow industry because they don't have that. Why does Poland have to export that product when we can use it here for our own production and handle our own bio-diversity problems?

Q: Isn't it too late for Poland, though? In the past 10 years Poland's meat industry has already been largely reshaped in the image of the EU's meat industry.

A: Yes. The leaning has been toward industrializing the production of beef and milk. But that's exactly why there's this niche. We have a problem ? a consumer crisis on the industrialized side and a booming market on the organic side.

Q: What will it take to kick start the growth of the organic meat industry?

A: Poland has new agro-environmental plans coming down the line, where there's money that could be paid to farmers for carrying out certain agro-environmental, pro bio-diversity measures. In other words if they chose to have free-grazing animals as opposed to an industrialized herd, then they will be getting benefits in the interest of preserving the environment and making them more competitive. Farmers are ready, veterinarians are ready, we've got assistance from organizations in the United States that are also interested in preventing the industrialization of Polish animal production. There's movement in the interests of the small family farmer to politically prevent the industrialization of agriculture.

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