Awright, I read your post again.  Yes, our farm was organic before the inspectors came.  I also had much better plans for the money than giving it to someone to tell me something I already knew. 

And then my niece, holding her baby, said to me that she would like to eat organic but can’t afford it.  Instead of saying, “Oh.  And what is the poison discount these days?” I remembered why I am doing this. 

It ain’t the money and short hours, brother.  There is something wrong with our food system and we need to stand up and fix it by providing decentralized, clean food to a population that might be ready to hear the message.  And as important, we have to show them why it’s better.

We are going to have barriers because conventional ag is deeply invested.  They buy their own “organic” divisions and lobby to soften the rules to sell to our growing customer base (Imitation is the purest form of flattery).  So we farmers end up fighting for cleaner, tougher rules to differentiate ourselves and get our communities to ask the questions:  What is the difference?

That is when we will arrive.  When someone comes to our stand and says, “Okay, you’re CCOF certified.  Good start, I guess.  What else do you do?  Do you process non-organic products on your farm?  Are your chickens pastured, not just free range?  Do you make your compost or use stuff on the OMRI list?” and things like that.  Real questions about their food. 

Yeah, right now Safeway sells O Organics, and people buy them. Its a tiny step.  Next they will want to upgrade.  It is up to us to show them where to upgrade to.  Show them Beyond Organic.  We need to educate people on the practices we are passionate about that the megafarms won’t do.  There are enough people who will react to this and we will win enough business to thrive. But before we can get the customer who wants to know the difference between on-farm sustainability methods, we need to get them to see us as the better option.  Right now organic certification is an important, albeit imperfect, tool to that end.  Without it we are more expensive and have little to differentiate ourselves in the market in the product itself (Oh, besides quality and taste…)

When they come to your farm, see how you do it, understand your reasons, and tell their friends that they trust you, you will sell all your shares.  You’ll also gain ground for sustainable agriculture as you grow smarter people.

Andrew,  We have been organic for 20 years.  Although we pay our annual fed government and state registration., we are not certified.  We already have too many government folks with their hands in our pockets.  (taxes, insurance, county ag inspection, farmers market fees, well tax, it just goes on and on.  I don’t think the USDA organic rules benefit anyone except certifiers,  who also lobbied for the bill.
We have always thought that conventional agriculture should be certified and inspected and those of us growing organic should get to skate!
We follow all the rules for organic and yes, you can say your organic if you don’t have more than $5000 worth of income. 

Farm on