Our Certified Naturally Grown application was accepted today. 

 For those of you that don't know what  Certified Naturally Grown is let me explain...

Certified Naturally Grown was created to ENCOURAGE people to purchase from the small diversified farmers

 Since congress declared that after October 21, 2002, any farmer selling over $5,000 worth of produce may NOT refer to their produce or growing methods as "Organic" unless they have been certified by a USDA accredited certification agency. Failure to comply with this order is punishable with fines up to $10,000 per violation per day. [NOP Final Rule: 205.100]

While the newly created certification process is affordable and pleasing to the huge organic agribusiness farms - especially those that specialize in growing only a few varieties of vegetable, its implementation has been counter-productive for the thousands of small, diversified family farms using natural methods and growing many different varieties of crops (a necessary and recommended practice for disease and insect control).

Diverse crops mean significant record-keeping burdens, as each crop requires a paper-trail from purchase of seed to sale of every pound of produce. Mounds of paperwork, plus high certification fees, make it unlikely if not impossible for many small farms to become certified organic. Some of the nations best organic farmers are ironically no longer able to call themselves "organic" anymore!

Certified Naturally Grown provides these small, local growers with an alternative label and certification system that consumers can quickly come to trust and understand.

  USDA Organic is really designed to serve the larger farming operations. Most Organic food you buy in a grocery store is produced on huge factory farms owned by corporations that are more interested in earning profits than producing safe, sustainably grown food. The biggest organic food companies are now owned by Dole, Kraft, General Mills, Unilever and even Coca Cola!

 Every aspect of the Certified Naturally Grown certification process is transparently open for the public to see and investigate - you will find every farmer's complete certification application on-line. Public access to scanned copies of Inspection Reports goes even further to ensure consumer confidence in this grassroots movement. Even the USDA program doesn't allow for this kind of public scrutiny.