People have been quizing me lately about wether or not I am going to get the farm "organicly certified" or not. I've been thinking a lot about this and have decided to not certify. I think that certification is purely ploy and not necicary for someone who markets locally. When you sell to a local market what you do is very transparent. (at least where I live. Everyone who drives by talks about all the weird things we are doing. People stop when ever they want to talk. Everyone knows someone who is related to someone who drives by our place all the time. There are no secrets.)
Besides being a marketing ploy, organic certification is not enough. I don't mean to belittle all the great work and research being done on organics and eco-agriculture. The techniques and information generated are very useful and important. However, when they are applied to our current style of farming, they will not solve the problem. Despite all the great research and innovations we are doing the same thing we have been doing for the past 10000 years - producing excess by importing resources (energy, minerals, etc.) from other places. Organics only steps us back 100 years or so. It still addresses symptoms, not causes.
I will use the best of organic techniques as well as good managed grazing and other innovations that will help me manage my land in a sane way. I will go beyond organics by marketing only my locally and drawing all needed resources from the local pool. I will return all byproducts of my production system to the land in a way that they can be recycled and used again. I do not need "certification" for this.
1 comment:
Not getting “organically certified” seems like a drastic step!
Organic certification is probably mostly a “marketing ploy” but doesn’t it also keep you out of trouble with the government?
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