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market-farming - Re: National Organic Program "Final Rule"

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Subject: Market Farming

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Rock Spring Farm <realfood AT RSFarm.com>
  • To: "market farming" <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: National Organic Program "Final Rule"
  • Date: Sun, 24 Dec 2000 11:15:43 -0600

At 07:23 AM 2000-12-24 -0600, you wrote:
By these rules would I be prohibited from posting a sign that says, "The
vegetables and herbs from our farm are growning using organic methods.  No
pesticides, herbicides or chemical fertilizers were used to grow our
produce."

For small growers I am not sure why certification was ever worth the cost.
If you're selling to other countries or to large retail outlets, OK.  But
for a grower who deals directly with customers and lives geographically
close, what is the point of spending the extra money?

Del Williams
Farmer in the Del
Clifton, Illinois/USA

I don't know if you would be prohibited from using that signage, but I do think you would have a first amendment case on your hands if you were.  We use that language frequently in our promotional literature since our farm is in transition.

Certification is a marketing tool.  That is all it is.  Depending on your definition of "small grower", it may or may not be worth the cost.  However, I would point out that even dealing with smaller retail outlets, such as your local food coop, certification provides at least some level of reassurance to your customers.  Although most of our local food coops managers are part of a homeschooling group to which we belong, and regularly visit our farm as part of our educational exchanges, none of them have ever taken opportunity to talk to us about our farming methods, soil management, or pest or weed control.  So the customers of said coop should in no way be assuming that local food sold through the coop is anything like what they should expect from "organic" food.

When I sold produce in California in the early 1990's, we put a lot of effort into educating our customers about the value of certification.  There was a lot of non-certified produce on the market at the time, but our customers appreciated the fact that, if nothing else, our farm had had to put a lot of effort into thinking about our farm operation for the certification application, and opened the farm to inspection by somebody trained to look for potential problems.

I would also note that many growers do not themselves know the meaning of "organic".  At the big-city farmers market we attend now (Rochester, MN), a neighboring livestock producer sold his meats as "organic" because he didn't medicate them, although he fed them plenty of conventional grains.  Many of our corn-and-bean neighbors think that if they don't use pesticides, that makes their product organic.  When a customer asks if our farm is organic, I look forward to being able to respond that our produce has been certified by an independent, third party as organic.

(We are not certified at this time because the land we farm on was in chemical corn and beans before we bought it; hence the "we use organic methods" line.)

I will note here that I wish the USDA had stayed out of it all together.

Best regards,

Chris



Rock Spring Farm
Chris and Kim Blanchard
3765 Highlandville Road
Spring Grove, MN  55974
319-735-5613
Fax: 319-735-5374
realfood AT RSFarm.com


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