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re: smallfarm-mg



In Rich Molini's post on this thread, he makes the comment that 
entrepreneurs such as certifying agencies, inspector trainers and 
consultants have all jumped on the band wagon to suck money out of small 
organic farmers. I don't see that it is quite that way.
From my view, this movement of growing organically started out small. 
CCOF originally had farmers inspecting farmers - for free. To check up on 
each other. Because there were some problems with fraud. As the movement 
got bigger, everyone got more busy and you couldn't find people to go out 
and inspect for free. Consumers demanded the verification, so now the 
movement needed to pay people for the inspection work.
I agree with Rich that patronizing small local farmers is best. But what 
happens in the meantime, while those farmers are building up their local 
markets? We have had lots of small farmers in our area drop out of CCOF 
because they no longer needed "the stinking badges" to prove to their 
customers that they were doing what they said they were doing. So they no 
longer need the service. Do we stop inspecting completely? What about 
Glacial Ridge? Unfortunately, the problem does seem to lie with large - 
large companies have an incentive to commit large fraud for large 
dollars. But like Walmart, just because we want it to go away doesn't 
mean it's going to. To not continue to police corporate (that magic word) 
business, organic or otherwise, has the potential to damage the entire 
movement.
Obviously, you can tell that I am involved with the organic inspector 
association, and I will put in a plug for them that they are very 
dedicated people who are working hard to train very dedicated inspectors 
that (again from my view) carry with them the passion for organics, a 
love of the planet and sustainability. To pidgeonhole them as 
entrepreneurs that want to suck off the system is simply not accurate. 
From my experience, these people care much more than the certifiers.
And, again, I agree, grow, buy, sell local. But don't fault those that 
are watchdogs for the macro.
Diane Cooner


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