Organic Produce

[Guest guest]

It seems to me the FDA is trying to make life for small farms difficult. Read this info posted on a local farm website:

What is "Ecoganic?"

Our farms were

certified organic by the state of Virginia, through the Virginia

Association for Biological Farming since 1991, and we recently decided

not to go through the application process with the new federal program.

We maintain a soil rich in organic matter and beneficial soil microbes

that will provide our crops with sufficient nutrients and a healthy

environment. We do not use any commercial synthetic fertilizers or

pesticides. By rotating crops, growing many different kinds of crops,

and using timely appropriate practices, we try to minimize insect and

disease damage. We manage our soil and cultivate our crops in ways that

we believe will allow the land to continue to be productive now and

into the future with a process we refer to as "ecoganic farming."

To Be or Not to Be... Certified

(reprinted from the November 18-19, 2003 CSA newsletter [PDF])

After

many months of deliberation and a tiny bit of hair pulling and heart

wrenching, we have decided to try NOT being certified organic. The

important part of that statement is that we will drop our

certification, not our being organic. But, by law now, if we do not

continue to be certified by an accredited third party certification

agency, then we are not allowed to use the "o" word anymore. We plan to

continue farming the same way, or better, than we always have. Here's

how we got to this new place...

We've been certified since 1990. The process was through a Virginia farmers organization, then through the state.

Basically,

the process of certification has become tougher, more complicated, much

more expensive, and more painful. The paperwork burden has increased

dramatically. We are supposed to be able to show on paper where any

random tomato found in your bag was grown—exactly which patch—and

everything that happened to that plant from seeding in the greenhouse,

to transplanting, hoeing, mulching, staking, harvesting, transporting

and finally being put in your bag. We grow so many kinds of

vegetables, planted multiple times throughout the season in different

patches, and on different farms. To keep track of the movement of each

tomato feels impossibly complex.

We must remember why

certification came about in the first place. It was designed for

consumers in a retail setting to be able to know something about the

food in front of them. It was a way for wholesale growers to tell their

consumers, whom they do not know or ever see, how they grew that

product. Wholesale growers tend to grow large acreages of many fewer

crops. We market gardeners, who know and see our customers, have much

more complicated operations and don't need a third party to represent

ourselves in the marketplace.

It will be sad to be

separated from our historic "organic" label. This was never the intent

of the federal guidelines, but it is the unexpected result. Many small

farms have opted out of the certification process, mainly due to the

magnitude of the documentation task, and there are many new possible

label words floating around. We'll just have to see which one suits us,

as we continue to grow vegetables in the same old, organic way.

--ScottDon't under estimate the wisdom of nature. Learn about the power of raw foods at ---> http://www.rawfoods.com