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Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Rick Williams" <mrfarm AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Organic industry vs. organic movement
  • Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 08:31:37 -0500


Lucy Goodman wrote:
> >I find this $5000 rule troubling My farm got decertified for all but
> .07 acres and our chickens about 5 years ago. I found in direct
> marketing that our customers assumed everything we grew was certified
> organic because we had a couple of items on the table that were
> identified as certified organic (chickens, pears and apples) but the
> rest was legally not organic and we took pains not to call that produce
> organic and to explain that fact to our customers.

Since you were at one time fully certified, what was it that changed five
years ago? Did the cost of certification keep increasing in cost until it
was too large a cost compared to the production?

Although it was the organic industry that approached the federal government
for government control of organic, they were well meaning I think, even if
misguided to take it to the extreme position that it has become.

The one thing that I have not been able to understand is the lack of support
for smallholders. There should have been some kind of maximum cost for
certification based on a percentage of the gross sales of the farm. And it
should have been a reasonable amount. It seems like 5% or at the most 10%
maximum?

What is the premium in most areas for selling organic production?

And is there a way to guarantee that you can sell your production or is it
still a bit shaky at times, particularly for the ones coming in late?

Over the next few years it will be interesting to see how this all shakes
out, but it does look as if there will be a need to be larger than what a
small family farm can handle on their own in order to justify the cost.
Otherwise, the certification cost soaks up a huge percentage of the money
that was supposed to go to the farmer in the first place for being organic.

Does anyone have a rough calculation on how much certification costs as a
percentage of gross sales at different levels of gross sales under the new
rules?

> What we had was organic by Association. It bothered me than that our
> customers thought that way, but now that my farm will be certified
> organic only until Halloween I think we will still call our eggs organic
> and label them as such (we sell under $5000 gross in eggs annually-the
> hens will still be fed certified organic grains and be raised exactly as
> they were under organic regulations).

One of things that I did find very helpful is that you can certify only a
portion of the farms production. Is this really a change of what they once
allowed? It seemed that I was told about 5 years ago that either our entire
farm was organic or nothing could be organic. But I now understand that I
could call the produce organic even though we do two things that make it
impossible for us to call our beef organic.

With our produce production, we are even more "organic" than most organic
producers because we don't even use bt or other such biological controls and
rely primarily on aged compost. I have always felt a bit uncomfortable with
added biologicals on my food that I personally eat.

Sincerely,

Rick Williams
Misty Ridge Farm
Dairy heifers and dairy beef graziers
Viroqua, WI

www.mistyridgefarm.com





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