Beyond Organic

At Pasture to Fork, we believe truly organic food production is more about the producer’s emotions, thoughts, and worldview—along with the scrutinizing eyes and probing questions of his purchasing constituents—than it is about a pass/fail certification process that can be fudged or a set of rules that can be bent. Which is to say you can learn more about me by seeing my reading material (which indicates my interests and worldview) than having me fill out a bunch of forms.

In our view, organic certification is only beneficial when there’s distance between the farm and the plate—or producer and consumer. Even then, it’s only as good as the integrity of the farmer and his organic inspector. Inspectors, like the rest of us, are humans prone to favor or disfavor their constituents based on personality, mood, like or dislike of individuals, and interpretation of the law. In reality, certified organic is a paper-thin trust based on the vagaries of the National Organic Program (NOP) as lawmaker, third party inspection agencies as enforcer, and the individual inspector as interpreter.

Who will we trust? A neighbor whose farm we can visit and pointed questions ask, or a paper-thin label based on the pass/fail system?

To read the full essay on our beyond-organic philosophy, click here.