Earthstar Farms had its annual certified organic inspection this week. The inspector was the same person we had last year from the Colorado Department of Agriculture, the agency that administers the USDA Organic Certification in our state. This is the thirteenth year that Earthstar Farms has been USDA certified organic, and the first year the inspection occurred under the new LLC. There are three actual certifications that we renew: Cultivated products, Wild-cropped products, and Processing. In the spring of each year we receive that year's set of certification documents to fill out (about 40 PDFs), and thankfully the bureaucracy has gotten easier this year, as the state has sent us the documents we filled out last year and asked us only to note what has changed since then, so we don't have to start from scratch each year filling out the forms.
The inspector's job is to walk around the properties and observe our processes, gardens, sheds, wild-cropped areas, greenhouses, and anything else they wish to ask about. Then they sit down with us and fill out a bunch more paperwork, including asking about the "seed to sale" of a random product that we sell. We then have to provide them with a paper trail that traces the whole chain of steps from when we planted, what inputs were used, and when it was harvested, processed, packaged, and sold. They also ask about another random product that we have to provide documentation showing how much we planted, and compare that to how much we sold, in order to ensure that we don't have a lot more sales than what we documented as planting. Thankfully this is all made very easy because of a set of databases I wrote specifically to track everything associated with maintaining the certification. I'll describe the details of how they work in another blog, but the gist is that it took me about five minutes to gather the pertinent information from the databases and print out the relevant log entries and sales reports for the inspector, who was very impressed by the ease and elegance of the system.
Given the detail that the inspector delves into to ensure that everything is in order with regard to all of the rules and regulations from the USDA, all the farms do a thorough job of getting everything ready for the inspection, and I want to acknowledge each farm for making this year's annual inspection relatively painless.
We find that as consumers, we love the organic standards. It's more challenging as a grower, of course. The regulations have gotten more strict over the years, but it's worth it to ensure that "USDA Organic" is something we can be proud of putting on our products. There are over 400 USDA certified organic entities in Colorado, and the state only has a handful of field inspectors to do annual inspections for all of them. Apparently they are so busy that they are currently not accepting new applications for USDA certified organic status. So what we have is a rare commodity worthy of maintaining, and we are thankful to have it as the organic agricultural market continues to grow as people care more and more about the quality of the food they eat.