By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Organic farmers are prohibited from using a host of synthetic products. Still there’s an important ingredient if a farmer wants to receive certification – lots of paperwork.
Eric Pawlowski, an educator with Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association, told the Northwest Ohio Ag-Business Breakfast Forum last week that nothing happens on an organic farm that isn’t documented. Every chore has to be accounted for to make sure no prohibited substances are used that could call into question a farmer’s organic certification.
Pawlowski knows the system well. He teaches farmers about it. He conducts audits of farms to make sure they meet the organic standards. And he’s a farmer himself.
On his operation, he said, he has workers write everything down on a dry erase board. At the end of the day, he snaps of photo of the board so he has a record of what has happened throughout that day on his farm.
“Everything that’s sold has to be traced to the ground of production,” Pawlowski said. When talking about milk everything is traced to the individual cow. And chores such as cleaning equipment have to be monitored.
Bridget Burgess of Hirzel Canning talks with Ed Pawlowski, of OEFFA, after his ag breakfast presentation on organic farming.
Organic products are commanding a larger share of the market, and they command a higher price at the market.
While a bushel of non-organic corn will sell for $2, a bushel of organic corn may fetch as much as $12.
Still going organic is not for the faint of heart. For one there’s the paperwork, and there’s also cost affiliated with earning that certification and maintaining it, including annual audits.
“If you’re just in it for the price premium, it’s not going to work. You have to have your heart in it,” Pawlowski said.
To be certified a farmer has to prove a parcel of land has been free of prohibited pest and weed control for three years. Then maintain it to the satisfaction of annual audits. That’s not as clear cut as it seems.
“There’s a lot of gray areas,” he said. These issues are “site specific.” Reflecting his own experience maintaining an organic farm. Pawlowski said. “Every year it shows you what you don’t know.”
The OEFFA can help guide the farmer navigate those gray areas.
The biggest concern many operators face is “drift” of prohibited substances from non-organic operations, Pawlowski said. If it happens, the farmer has to set aside the affected property for three more years. The best guard against it, he said, is maintaining an adequate buffer between organic and non-organic fields. Also working closely with neighboring non-organic operations is important so when they do aerial spraying, they can observe the operation,and document what they see.
The certification dates back to 1991 when federal legislation was passed. It then took another decade to draw up the regulations.
OEFFA is one of about 85 agencies nationally that can bestow the Certified Organic label on a farm.
“It’s the gold standard,” Pawlowski said. “It’s the highest level of production standard I can obtain.”
“Organic” is about marketing, he said. That Certified Organic label sets a farmer’s product off from his competitors.
“My competition are not the other farmers at the farmers market, but California, Mexico and Kroger,” Pawlowski said.
When someone in the audience said some farmers questioned the value of the organic label feeling it didn’t go far enough, Pawlowski was firm in his response. If a farmers wants to take more rigorous controls on their land, they can. But if they are going to market their product as organic they need to get the certification to prove it. Otherwise they are undermining those who have taken the time, effort and money to go through the process.
