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Revision of the Canadian Organic Standards

in 2024/Current Issue/Organic Community/Organic Standards/Standards Updates/Winter 2024

By Nicolas Walser

It’s that time again: the review of the Canadian Organic Standards!

Every five years, the Canadian Organic Standards undergo a revision and an updated version is published. Organic standards need to evolve to address emerging challenges, technological advancements, and scientific research. The last revision was published in 2020—always be sure you are referring to the most up-to-date version.

You may be asking, “If revisions occur every five years, don’t we have some time before the 2025 version?” The reality is that updating the standards is quite a lengthy process and requires input from many stakeholders.

The Canadian Organic Standards are held by the Canadian General Standards Board (CGSB) and maintained by the Organic Federation of Canada (OFC) but are ultimately “owned by the public.” This means that it is the public and industry, not the government, who gets to make and set the standards. So, anyone can be involved in the revision process.

The revision process is spearheaded by the OFC, starting by receiving proposals from the public; this began in July 2023, and 290 proposals have been received. OFC then convenes seven Working Groups to discuss the proposals, each focused on a specific area of organic production (crops, livestock, etc). Each Working Group is made up of 15 members and contains numerous producers, as well as consultants, organic stakeholders, and at least one verification officer or representative of a certifying body.

Within a Working Group there are Task Forces made up of specialists and focused on specific areas of the standards, such as poultry or mushrooms. They discuss proposals in great detail and bring their recommendations to the larger Working Group.

After the Working Groups have assessed the proposals and come to a consensus, their recommendations are sent to the CGSB’s Technical Committee on Organic Agriculture. The Technical Committee is made up of volunteers who represent organizations from across Canada, including industry groups and provincial associations. There are voting and non-voting members; non-voting members provide input and technical expertise but are unable to vote on the adoption of the standards. Once the Technical Committee has made its decisions the new draft standards will be opened up for public comment in 2025.

Organic BC has the privilege to be a voting member of the Technical Committee. This is a very exciting opportunity for our organization to have a seat at the national table. As the first province in Canada to have had a provincial organic standard—the BC Certified Organic Program was created in 1993 and was foundational to the creation of the National Standard—we have lots to offer the rest of the country.

Involvement in the revision process allows Organic BC to contribute to the development of standards that not only meet regulatory requirements but also enhance consumer trust in the authenticity and integrity of organic products. Organic BC will be able to contribute valuable insights on how the standards can be adapted to better suit the specific conditions of BC’s unique and diverse organic sector. BC requires a set of standards which are robust and empower our producers to continue in our mission “To cultivate a resilient organic movement in British Columbia.”

I am very excited to be able to represent Organic BC on the Technical Committee. I don’t take this responsibility lightly, as our industry relies on these standards. Organic BC’s executive director, Eva-Lena Lang, and I will be having regular meetings throughout the revision process to ensure that our votes align with the needs of the organic community in BC. I encourage everyone to review the 290 proposals that have been submitted for consideration for the revisions.

Each proposal will have to be assessed and discussed, which is why the revision process takes such a long time. This rigorous process relies on many volunteers contributing a significant amount of effort to ensure that the standards continue to be robust and reflect IFOAM Organics International’s Principles of Organics (Health, Ecology, Fairness, Care).

I am looking forward to undergoing this work in a manner that fosters collaboration and ensures that the standards are developed through a consultative and inclusive approach, taking into account the perspectives of our various stakeholders.

Your input is crucial throughout this process, both now in reviewing the proposals, and later, when the draft is released for public comments. The sooner we have your input, the more time we will have to devote to ensure that the revisions reflect the needs of our community.

You can view the proposals at the Organic Federation of Canada website:

If you have comments on any of the proposals, please share your feedback with Organic BC by emailing info@organicbc.org.

Nicolas Walser (he/him) is an agrologist who lives and grows in unceded Ktunaxa territory with his family. A seed saver, wetland enthusiast and policy nerd he sits on Organic BC’s Accreditation Board and the Central Kootenay Food Policy Council.

Featured image: Peppers ripening at Northstar Organics. Credit: Maylies Lang.

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Organic Stories: Northbrook Farm, WSANEC Territory

in 2023/Grow Organic/Land Stewardship/Marketing/Organic Community/Organic Stories/Spring/Summer 2023

Neither Bored Nor Lonely

Collaboration & Community

By Moss Dance

On a sunny day in light spring, I called up Heather Stretch at Northbrook Farm for a chat. The sun was shining in WSÁNEC territory on the Saanich Peninsula, and I could hear that she was busy working on something in the background while we dove into her story of farming, collaboration, community, and the organic movement.

Heather Stretch is a well-known figure in the organic world—she recently served on the Organic BC board as president, building on her 23-year history of collaborative farming. Northbrook Farm is one of the three farms that make up Saanich Organics, along with Three Oaks Farm (Rachel Fisher), just down the road in Saanichton, and Sea Bluff Farm (Robin Tunnicliffe), a little further afield in Metchosin.

The trio of farmers who began Saanich Organics (Heather Stretch, Rachel Fisher, and Robin Tunnicliffe) have been active in the organic community for many years. They also wrote a book called All the Dirt: Reflections on Organic Farming, which is part memoir, part practical guide for beginning farmers.

Sarah Mastromonaco and Steven Hung in the fields. Credit: Maylies Lang.

The spirit of cooperation that infuses Heather’s work is in full bloom at Northbrook Farm. The total size of the property is 20 acres—Heather and her spouse Lamont co-own the land with Heather’s aunt and uncle, Brian and Jane Stretch. On the land, buzzing like a hive of productive bees, businesses and farming friends flourish. Northbrook Farm comprises seven acres of the property, and the land is shared with Square Root Farm, an organic vegetable operation run by Chrystal Bryson and Ilya Amhrein. Rebecca’s Garden, run by Rebecca Jehn, also has a large plot to grow some warmer climate seed crops at Northbrook Farm. Brian and Jane Stretch have a plot where they grew cut flowers for many years—they now lease this area to Mayan Vered, of Flowerface Farm. Finally, Saanich Organics has a shared plot on the land, including a large greenhouse, affectionately named Long John, or LJ for short.

Of all of the agreements she has with farmers on the land, the lease arrangement with Rebecca’s Garden is Heather’s favourite: “no money changes hands at all,” she says. “Once a year, Rebecca brings me some preserves, and if it’s been a good seed year, she’ll bring me some seed, and we always have an amazing feast.”
With all of this activity, and all of these people on the land, I asked Heather what day-to-day life is like on the farm. Heather says she’s “neither bored, nor lonely.”

The Roots of Northbrook Farm

It wasn’t until Heather was in her early twenties with a freshly-minted English degree that she realized farming would be a great career for her. “Most people would assume that someone who starts an organic farm had a pre-existing passion for growing. In my case, that came later.” Heather writes in All the Dirt: Reflections on Organic Farming. “My uncle offered me land to farm, and until that moment, I had never considered farming. From the moment he mentioned it, though, it seemed like a perfect fit for me.”

Misty morning at Northbrook Farm. Credit: Maylies Lang.

The promise of working outdoors, growing food, an environmentally sustainable career, and the ability to include family in her work life convinced Heather to accept her Uncle Brian’s offer. When she met her husband Lamont, she says, “the poor guy fell in love with a woman who already had a plan.” Luckily, Lamont decided to move from North Carolina to the Saanich Peninsula with Heather to pursue her dream of farming.

“I had the great good fortune to have free land to farm for my first three years,” writes Heather. “Lamont and I decided to buy my grandmother’s portion of the land that we now share with my aunt and uncle. Fortunately, she gave us a great deal, because otherwise we probably wouldn’t have been able to afford to buy land in this area.”

Northbrook Farm’s name is a nod to Lamont’s lineage. Northbrook is a region of rural North Carolina where his father was born, and it also suits the sunny parcel of land with a brook running through it.

Trust Equals Success

Saanich Organics was founded by Heather, Robin, and Rachel’s farmer mentors, Tina Baynes and Rebecca Jehn. Heather, Robin, and Rachel purchased the business from their mentors in the early 2000s.

Sales are conducted through a CSA program, restaurants, and grocery stores. Saanich Organics’ marketing strategy has evolved with the growth of everyone’s life situations and land base. For example, Heather says, Robin moved out to Sea Bluff Farm about 10 years ago—a huge size upgrade from her original one-acre plot. “There were some adjustments there to figure out how to increase sales,” says Heather, “and we had to figure out how the business would work when the contributing farms were at very different scales.” Navigating big changes in a collectively-owned business isn’t easy, and Heather points to trust, friendship, and communication as important factors in managing growth and transition.

Green beans ready to harvest. Credit: Maylies Lang.

The Saanich Organics team have come up with a creative solution to account for the different scale of production at each of their member farms. Sea Bluff Farm has a very popular farm stand in Metchosin, so Robin also has the ability to market extra produce on her own. Rachel and Heather attend the Moss Street and James Bay Markets in Victoria. This helps to evenly distribute the marketing according to the scale of each farm. When needed, Heather and Rachel will occasionally send products to sell on the Sea Bluff Farm stand.

“Twenty-two years into our business partnership, we certainly trust each other’s intentions,” Heather says. “Obviously, we disagree sometimes, and we may question each other’s decisions—but the one thing we never do is question each other’s intention behind the decision.” The foundation of Saanich Organics is friendship, and the clarity of trust and relationship is the spring that has fed the business over two decades.

Support & Mentorship

In the early years, Heather found support from the organic community, her husband, family, and business partners. She got involved with Islands Organic Producers’ Association (IOPA), and as she moved through the certification process, she found support in the organic standards.

“When I started farming, the certification system gave me a framework to learn about what organic production was, and to learn what best practices were,” says Heather. “The framework of the standards was my first primer on how to make choices to manage fertility and soil health.”

Going through the certification process and getting involved with IOPA brought other benefits as well. “The community that this all brought to me was important. I went to an IOPA AGM before I had even planted my first seed, and the people that I met on that first day became my first friends and mentors in the community.”

Heather acknowledges the local organic farming mentors who nurtured her along, including Rebecca Jehn (Rebecca’s Garden), Tina Baynes (Corner Farm), Mary Alice Johnson (ALM Farm), and Dieter Eisenhawer (Eisenhawer Organic Produce). Along with these mentors, Heather acknowledges her business partners Robin and Rachel as major pillars of support.

Family photo. Credit: Northbrook Farm.

Financial Realities

For the first three years at Northbrook Farm, Heather managed the farm on her own, with help from Lamont. After that, they began to invite farm
apprentices in, and this morphed into paid farm hands, managed by Heather.

“In 2021, I decided to hire a field manager, because I didn’t want to feel guilty every moment that I wasn’t on the farm,” says Heather,

She’s been enjoying the challenge of learning how to effectively mentor farm managers. The most difficult part is making sure the managers have all the information they need to be successful, but at the same time, giving them some space to experiment. Heather says she’s trying to strike a balance “where I’m neither micromanaging, nor abandoning the farm manager.”

This is easier said than done due to the incredible financial pressure on the farm, Heather says. “The financial margins on a farm are so non-existent that there really is no room to say, oh, we’ll just let them figure it out and experiment.” With the increasing overhead of wages, supplies, and inputs, Heather walks this tightrope with grace, and respect for her employees.

Due to the rising costs of running a business, Heather says, “the sad reality is that the financial aspect of the farm is no less challenging than it was in year four or five. The farm makes way more money than it did in year five, but I don’t.” In short, the farm has made a huge increase in gross sales, but has not increased in profitability.

She clarifies that it’s her spouse Lamont’s off-farm income that allows the family to have the lifestyle that they enjoy. That being said, she continues, “the farm is my business, my career, and my job. And my career is not as financially lucrative as my spouse’s.”

“I don’t want anyone who comes to this farm to think, ‘Oh my gosh this is so awesome, you can have a farm and raise three kids, one’s away at school, one plays competitive sports, that this is all happening on a farming income.’” Heather quips, “I do not pay to raise my own children.”

Marissa Carlberg harvesting salad greens. Credit: Maylies Lang.

Raising Kids and Vegetables

After her first year of farming, Heather was pregnant, and she received a crash course in farming full-time with a child. Five years later, Heather was farming full-time with three tots in tow.
She remembers one day when the kids were little, and it was a really bad year for mummy berry— Heather has a big blueberry patch. “I was walking by the greenhouse that Saanich Organics employee Mel Sylvestre was handling, and Mel hollered, ‘Hey Heather, the blight has just started in the tomatoes,’” Heather laughs.

“The kid was screaming, and I was exhausted,” she continues, “and I remember being so disheartened, and thinking, what am I doing?”

She thought about it for a moment, and realized, “I couldn’t think of anything else I would do. And that was almost the worst part, feeling like, ‘I’m in this too deep.’ And I didn’t have any reserves left in my body, mind, or spirit to step back and think, maybe I should not be farming right now.”

A few years later, someone Heather knew who was farming and pregnant said she wouldn’t be growing in the coming season, and that she would put everything into cover crops and take a maternity leave. Heather says, “my kids were elementary school age by that time, and my jaw dropped. It never actually occurred to me that I could take a break!” Her first baby was born in early January, and in early February she was starting seedlings. “I was doing crop planning right after I got home from the hospital with my baby,” she remembers.

Heather with cauliflower. Credit: Northbrook Farm.

Memorable Moments and People

Heather says the most joyous memories she has are “visual snippets.” Some of her best memories are “walking down to feed the chickens in the morning and seeing the early sunlight sparkling through the dew on the kale leaves.”

Her biggest treasure is “the composite joy and the sense of richness that I get when I step back and think of all the people who have come through the farm.”
“It’s not just because I got to work with Jay Williamson of Tendergreens Farm, and Josh who now runs Fat Chance Farmstead in Kingston, and Mel Sylvestre who now runs Grounded Acres on the Sunshine Coast,” she says. The network of farmers she has worked with over the years, “like Crystal and Ilya of Square Root Farm, and Rebecca Jehn, and first and foremost Robin and Rachel,” have brought a sense of richness to Heather’s life.

Similarly, Heather has played an important role in mentoring many farmers and apprentices: “Having the brilliance of these young people come through my life every year is a huge gift.” She says, “the apprentices and farm hands who have come through, whom I’ve gotten to spend a season or two with in what is often a very formative period in their lives—that’s where the really deep satisfaction comes in.”

Heather says that when her children were young, the farm hands and apprentices were a positive influence. “They were able to learn from, and respect many different people. That’s one thing I am really proud of at Northbrook Farm, is how many LGBTQ folks have worked here.” Heather continues, “that’s been a huge benefit to me and my family, because my kids have never been without the knowledge that being LGBTQ is a perfectly normal way to be in the world.”

Northbrook Farm and Saanich Organics are known throughout the local 2SLGBTQIA+ community for their support—they even sponsored the Rainbow Chard Queer Farmers Collective in the Victoria Pride Parade. It all started with a few employees early on having a great experience, and sharing that with others in their circles through word of mouth.

Organic Isn’t Just a Word

Besides her passion for environmental sustainability and community, the marketing advantage of certification appealed to Heather. “Even before we had mandatory organic, if you’re going to use a word as important as ‘organic,’ all legal requirements aside, it begs the question, what do you mean by that?”

“The definition of organic cannot be a simple one, and that’s how the standards have evolved, to define this term, organic,” says Heather. “Without that definition, the word is meaningless. Whenever we separate the word ‘organic’ from the [practice of the standards], it harms all of us. Organic is an agreement that we make among ourselves.”

Knowledge and practice of the organic standards requires lifelong study, expertise, and experience that is hard to convey to customers in a short conversation. “I don’t have time to have a conversation with every customer about exactly what all my soil fertility practices are, and what crop rotations look like on my farm,” emphasizes Heather. “More importantly, our customers should not have to be experts in agriculture to feel like they can eat good food, and make healthy and environmentally responsible choices.”

Heather points out the common misconception that “knowing your farmer” can replace the need for organic standards. “To say that a conversation between farmer and consumer replaces the need for organic certification is completely wrong,” she says. “Just because a person knows me, or because I’m nice, doesn’t mean I’m employing best practices. It does not guarantee that I am not using pesticides or chemical fertilizers.” Organic certification takes the guess-work out of relationships between farmers and consumers.

Pillars of Support

Heather Stretch has contributed a lot to the organic community in BC over the years. “I farm because I’m passionate about the food system,” she says. “In the beginning, it just felt like it was incumbent on me and everyone else who cares to step up. The longer you’re involved, the more you realize [the work is] important and interesting. And farmers are fun people to work with. Organic BC has given me the gift of community all around the province.”

“My pillar of support is the organic community in BC,” says Heather, “and the organic community needs the pillar of support that is Eva-Lena Lang. Eva-Lena is the unsung hero of the movement— she keeps this ship afloat through really turbulent waters.”

“There are also the wise, indefatigable women who somehow manage to spread joy at the same time as they spread wisdom,” says Heather, “like
Rebecca Kneen of Crannog Ales, and Anne Macey. They show up decade after decade, doing difficult and often boring work—but they bring joy when they do it.”

“And now the younger men like Jordan Marr and Tristan Banwell,” she continues, “and Tristan’s wife Aubyn needs a shout-out—she’s the reason that Tristan can do this work. All of our pillars of support have support underground that we may or may not see.” This underground support is so important to the success of farmers, whether in the field, or in community work.

The Future of Northbrook Farm

“Over the years, my role is changing,” Heather says, “I don’t do much seeding, weeding, thinning, or harvesting anymore. I do the business planning, the marketing, the bookkeeping, the purchasing, and everything that needs to happen on weekends, like watering.”

When asked what she’s excited about for the future for her farm, Heather talks about her commitment to increasing profitability to achieve her goals of higher wages for employees, and to retain workers for many seasons to come. Heather wants her farm manager role to be an employment opportunity that lasts more than a year or two—she’s hoping to “provide career track employment for farmers, rather than just seasonal work.”

Meanwhile, in the field, Heather is excited about her overwintered cauliflower, “because it’s such a rare and wonderful thing when it actually works!” She gushes, “the way the cauliflower heads just pop out of the leaves—one day there are these plants with no white showing and the next day you go down to look, and there are beautiful cauliflower heads!”

Heather is always up for an experiment, “This year I’m trying a crop of main season cauliflower, which I’ve never succeeded in. Hope springs eternal!”

Hope truly does spring eternal in the fields at Northbrook Farm, where community and collaboration have created a rich tapestry of people and food that will benefit generations to come.

Moss Dance is the layout designer for the BC Organic Grower, a once-and-future vegetable farmer with a big garden, and a newly practicing acupuncturist on the territories of the Hul’qumi’num and SENCOTEN speaking peoples on Salt Spring Island.

Featured image: Salad green harvest at Northbrook Farm. Credit: Maylies Lang.

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GM Seed Secrecy Threatens Organics

in 2023/GMO Updates/Seeds/Winter 2023

By Lucy Sharratt

WARNING: This seed packet could soon be full of undisclosed genetically modified (GM) seeds.

The biotechnology industry is pushing to take over the regulation of genetically engineered (genetically modified or GM) seeds and foods, and establish corporate self-regulation in place of government oversight. The Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food is considering letting corporations conduct their own environmental safety assessments of many new gene-edited seeds with no government oversight, and decide if they want to disclose that their new product is genetically engineered. The Minister of Health has already decided that many gene edited foods don’t need any government safety checks. The proliferation of unknown genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the food system is a serious threat to the future of organic farming.

Seed Packet Warning Sent to the Minister

At the end of last year, hundreds of farmers in the Prairies sent seed packets in the mail to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food. These envelopes were empty of seeds but carried an important message to the Minister about the threat to organic farming if she allows the sale of unassessed, undisclosed genetically engineered seeds.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is proposing to allow companies to sell many new gene-edited GM seeds—those that have no foreign DNA—without notifying farmers, consumers, or even the federal government. This exemption will mean that companies will do their own environmental assessments and leave farmers dependent on companies to find out if seeds are gene-edited.

The biotechnology industry has launched a public relations campaign to characterize gene editing techniques as “plant breeding innovation” or “precision breeding,” and argue that gene-edited seeds should not even be defined as GMOs. However, gene editing is genetic engineering. This is the science, and it is also the definition in the Canada Organic Standards.

The Canada Organic Regime is overseen by the CFIA and includes the enforcement of the organic standards, which prohibit the use of genetic engineering. The Canada Organic Trade Association says, “It is the CFIA’s responsibility to ensure the environmental safety of all genetically engineered plants and the protection of the organic integrity. CFIA must continue to regulate all genetically engineered plants under the Seeds Act—including those produced through the new techniques of gene editing.”

CropLife Influence Exposed

A 2022 investigation by French-language CBC found that a CFIA document summarizing the agency’s proposals to remove regulation was actually authored by the biotechnology and pesticide industry lobby group CropLife Canada. The history of the Word file shows that CropLife’s executive director was the creator of the document.

This revelation led the National Farmers Union, CBAN, and 13 other groups to call for the CFIA President to be replaced. The groups said, “It appears that key aspects of the proposed guidance…were requested by self-interested industry groups and have been incorporated into the CFIA regulatory guidance.”

The CFIA has explained that CropLife authorship of the document was a technical mistake in the process of exchanging draft documents for comment. However, this mistake was only possible because the CFIA sent CropLife this proposal summary for their input. Farm groups such as the National Farmers Union were not asked to review it.

The CFIA consulted with farmer organizations in the summers of 2021 and 2022. However, as Garry Johnson, President of SaskOrganics said, “If the government is sincere about hearing from farmers, when their proposals would have such a major impact on organic farmers in particular, they should choose a time that is much less demanding on all of us.”

Minister Pledges GMO Transparency

In response to the media story, the Minister of Agriculture told organic farmers that they don’t need to worry; that she will make sure farmers have transparency about new GM seeds coming to the market. However, the Minister has not yet secured mandatory reporting and the CFIA continues to meet with CropLife to discuss the industry’s proposal for “voluntary transparency.”CropLife is pushing to be the arbiter of information for farmers. It wants to manage a public list that relies on biotech companies to voluntarily disclose their GM seeds. In fact, CropLife has its own private, voluntary product notification system ready to roll. This is a tactic to avoid regulation and mandatory reporting.
The biotech industry wants the Minister to accept voluntary corporate notification as sufficient transparency. However, there would be no way to know that this list was complete or to verify the information on the it.

This lack of transparency would go far beyond the existing problem of unlabelled GM foods in our grocery stores. Some GM foods and seeds would be sold, planted, and eaten without the public, farmers, and government knowing that they even exist.

Removing regulation would remove the ability of the federal government to request information from companies about their new unregulated GM foods and seeds. There would be no way to track and trace these secret, unregulated GMOs.

In an October 2022 letter to the Minister, SaskOrganics, the National Farmers Union, and the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network (CBAN) argued that “transparency and traceability will only be possible if the CFIA and Health Canada retain their regulatory authority over all genetically engineered products such that, prior to release into the environment or onto the market, the departments require submission of information from product developers and have the ability to provide it to Canadians in a timely, trusted, and accessible way.”

The CFIA is stuck with an irreconcilable contradiction. The CFIA, federal government, and Minister have all publicly committed to “transparency,” but the CFIA is proposing to remove the very regulation that would ensure it.

Act Now to Stop Corporate Self-Regulation

In May 2022, Health Canada announced that it will not regulate gene-edited GM foods, and will propose amendments to the Novel Food Regulations to formalize these changes. This is an acknowledgement that the Minister of Health can still reverse Health Canada’s new regulatory guidance that exempts these foods.

In a January 2023 letter responding to SaskOrganics, the Minister of Agriculture said she has asked the CFIA and Agriculture Canada “to propose options to ensure traceability and transparency of genetically engineered plant varieties to maintain the integrity of Canada’s organic food production system.” However, the solution needed can only be secured if organic farmers, organic sector groups, and the public continue to communicate with the Minister.

The Endgame is Complete Corporate Control

CropLife members include the biggest seed and pesticide companies in the world. These companies would clearly be the beneficiaries of an open door to sell unregulated GMOs. These corporations would be free to put many GM products on the market without the costs of submitting safety data to regulators, could cut their confidential safety studies down to a bare minimum, and could keep their GMOs a market secret and thus avoid the risk of consumer boycotts. The proliferation of undisclosed GMOs would also remove the competition: by contaminating the entire food system with secret GMOs, over time, organic production and other non-GMO choices would become unviable.
Actions and updates are posted at: cban.ca/NoExemptions

Lucy Sharratt is Coordinator of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network (CBAN), a project of the MakeWay Charitable Society.

Featured image: Letters and seed packets. Credit: Canadian Biotechnology Action Network.

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Organic Stories: Grounded Acres, Skwxwú7mesh territory

in 2022/Climate Change/Crop Production/Fall 2022/Grow Organic/Marketing/Organic Community/Organic Stories

Digging into Community

Darcy Smith

Mel Sylvestre has been farming for almost 20 years, and she’s pretty sure she’ll never run out of lessons learned. From last year’s heat dome, to this year’s cold, wet weather, to figuring out just what type of kale customers want, every farming season brings new challenges—and new opportunities.

She farms with Hannah Lewis, her “partner in life, partner in business,” at Grounded Acres Organic Farm on what is today known as the Sunshine Coast. Of their five-acre property, “about two acres, give or take, is farmed in some way.”

Mel and Hannah grow mixed vegetables and have about 100 laying hens, and they get their food to their community through the Sechelt Farmers’ Market, their farm stand, local restaurants, and a collaborative community box program put together by a local organization.

The vision for Grounded Acres was to open up an acre of land and grow from there. They knew they could make enough revenue out of an acre to keep them going, and build from there wisely. They were also keen to learn what people wanted in their new community. “We did a lot of market research,” Mel says, “Our first year we did a blind shot in the dark—we grew as much and little as we could of everything and let things fly, so we could see what the enthusiasm was for. In one region everyone wants green curly kale, in another people want Lacinato kale, and you don’t know why.”

Grounded Acres apprentice crew working in the fields. Credit: Grounded Acres Organic Farm.

As they get to know their community, Mel and Hannah are also learning the land, which was first opened up over a century ago. First a strawberry farm, then planted in potatoes, it had been 30 to 50 years without having tillage of any sort when they arrived. The land isn’t classified as agricultural soil: it’s class four, or with improvement class 3, loamy sand. Mel says “it’s extremely sandy, and in some parts extremely rocky. In other parts, folks a century ago did the work of removing rocks.”

The good news is Mel is familiar with improving soil. Before moving to the coast, both Mel and Hannah spent almost a decade working at UBC Farm, which has the same soil class. “We came with a shovel when we visited the property. I dug a hole and said, ‘Ah, same soil’.”

Mel originally trained as a musician and sound tech, but when the industry began turning to technology and opportunities dwindled for sound techs, she landed on an organic farm in the outskirts of Montreal teaching children. Despite being raised in the middle of cornfields and dairy cows, she hadn’t been interested in farming until, she says, “I was watching people in the field and thought, ‘Hey, that looks fun’.” One day, they needed help, so Mel “picked up a hoe, went out and helped, and fell in love.” From there, she got another farm job.

Sometimes, Mel says “I wish I had started with an apprenticeship, or working more intentionally on the farm. Things just kept happening, and life brought me from one farm to another.” She ended up in BC in 2005, and farmed with Saanich Organics on the island for six seasons.

Curious hens provide eggs to the Gibson’s community. Credit: Grounded Acres Organic Farm.

Eight years into her farming journey, she had a window where she could return to university, and studied plant and soil science at UBC. That led her to UBC Farm, where she “discovered a new love, teaching and helping other folks getting into farming.” UBC farm is also where Mel had the opportunity to get into seed production.

UBC Farm is where she found a different kind of love. Hannah was already working in the Indigenous garden at UBC Farm when Mel arrived, but it took them a year—and realizing they were neighbours—before they started connecting. “We didn’t overlap much at the farm, our rhythms in the day were quite different, but we discovered we lived a block from each other, and every time I was taking the 99 bus from East Van she was on the bus. We call it a 99 romance—the 99 brought us together.”

Mel knew she didn’t want to stay in the city long-term, but Hannah was an educator by training. While she really liked gardening, Hannah wasn’t sure how she felt about farming—until she took UBC’s farm practicum and discovered she also loved working the land.

But, Mel says, “what Hannah loved even more was the Sunshine Coast. In my head I thought I was going to go back to the island where my community was, but she convinced me.” They started looking for property, and, Mel says, “I started developing my relationship with the land here.”

It took them three years to find the right piece of land, and by then Mel and Hannah had new twins along for the ride. “We have the lucky situation, the privilege, of having family that invested in our land,” which, Mel says, “was a life saver in the start-up of this business.” Hannah’s mother sold her condo in Vancouver and moved with the young family in order to help them buy the property. “Having the grandchildren in the picture helped.”

Mel is “thankful for the years I spent working on other farms. It’s a blessing and curse. I knew what I needed to be successful, but the curse was I knew how much money it would cost.” They started with zero savings, and Mel knew they would need $100 thousand in financing for the first year to even be able to make their loan payments. “That was the barebone minimum. It seems like a lot of money but it was just barely what I knew we needed to be resilient and get through those first few years, as well as be healthy for our family. We’re not 20 anymore,” Mel says. “We have twins and they’re two years old, and we had a lot of infrastructure to put in place: irrigation, greenhouses, washing station, cooler, workshop. There was a lot that needed to come together to make the farm possible.”

With a solid business plan, clear vision, and the confidence that comes from experience, they went in search of funding—and an angel investor from the community “came out of the woodwork, believed in us, and lent us the money that we needed,” Mel says.

Hannah and Chef Johnny Bridge satisfied with cauliflower. Credit: @joshneufeldphoto.

Mid-way through their second season on this piece of land, Mel reflects on how lucky they’ve been, despite a tough year. Crops are three weeks behind, and some have been lost due to weather and pests. “All the things from a cold wet spring,” Mel says. “That’s the name of the game. Every farm has pluses and minuses, and depending on the season, you’ll lose some and gain some.” They have sandy soil, so the heat dome—and accompanying water restrictions—was harder. The sandy soil helped them out this spring, while nearby farms are on clay soil, which never drains. “I feel for the beginners right now. The last two to three seasons were uniquely hard. It’s next-level hardship for farming.”

Mel has the “old equation” in her head, from when she was brought up to be a new farmer. Once upon a time, the first three years were supposed to be tough, and starting in years four to five, “it should be even keel, you should have your system down and understand the land enough to play around.” That magic three-to-five-year number is because “even if you know what you’re doing, there are still things to learn, on the land, in the area, what’s the pattern here, why aren’t the cover crops growing. There’s lots to troubleshoot.” But, Mel says, “that’s not the way it is any more. It could be year 10 before you start to feel like you’re coasting…”

At Grounded Acres, they’re “still really in the deep of it,” learning what their customers want, what ingredients chefs are looking for—there’s lots to figure out. But there’s good news: “one thing people have said even before we moved here, if you grow it, it will fly.” Even before the pandemic, young families were leaving the city and moving to the Sunshine Coast. Between the young families and established residents, there’s high demand for fresh produce. Marketing their product on the coast “has been a fairly easy ride compared to other regions I’ve worked in where there are a lot of other market gardeners per capita,” Mel says.

Mel out on the tractor on a long summer evening.
Credit: Grounded Acres Organic Farm.

As it turns out, on the Sunshine Coast everyone wants curly kale, but that hasn’t stopped Mel and Hannah from planting a variety. “We love the diversity. One will sell more, but there’s going to be a reason why we’re glad we planted the other,” says Mel. “Siberian kale is not my favourite in the summer—pests love it. But I always plant a bit because over the winter it’s going to rock it. We had the worst winter last year, it was so cold for so long, but we were still harvesting Siberian kale.” Mel remembers that the other varieties were skeletons, but the Siberian came roaring back and they were able to sell bags of braising greens. “Fresh kale on the stand in March—people will elbow each other out of the way to get it.”

Mel says they will always keep the diversity in their crop planning. “I think climate change is reinforcing what we’ve known as biodiverse small-scale farmers,” she says, and recommends that even within one crop, don’t plant just one variety, go for a few. “It surprises me every year, that one variety rocked it for four years but this year not so much. I’m always so glad I planted that other one. Climate change is running that message back home heavily about not putting all your eggs in one basket.”

Over the last hard winter five or six years back, Mel remembers people planting more and more overwintering brassicas like purple sprouting broccoli, or planting lots of greens in the spring. The risk there is picking up on that trend and over-committing. One person, at least, planted triple the amount and lost everything. “Mother nature is always like, ‘Oh you’re feeling confident, I’ll take your confidence away’.” Moments like that are there to “remind you not to bank too hard on that income, to have other avenues to make it through the season.”

“We live in a culture where we’re looking for that one book, that one person who’s going to teach us everything,” Mel says. “Farming is not that. I know folks that went to five, six, seven different farms to learn as much as they can. You will still learn until you die. There is no recipe in farming, there’s just a set of skills and knowledge you can keep accumulating.”

Mel highlights the importance of having a “troubleshooting mind” in the absence of a formula: someone can say, do it this way and this will be your result. “Maybe one year out of three that will be true. Other years, you get a cold spring and you have white fly now.” She is adamant that no one person on this planet can teach you—rather, it’s important to have diverse teachers. While there’s lots to be learned from books or online resources, that can be “a dangerous road. It doesn’t give you as much resilience in your toolbelt as just going through a season with one farmer locally in the region you want to farm.”

Grounded Acres Organic Farm Family: Hannah, Mel, Juniper, and River. Credit: Grounded Acres Organic Farm.

Community has been more important to their early success than Mel would ever have dreamed. Between Hannah and Mel, they have an incredible—and complementary—set of skills that are different and complete each other. Mel loves people but describes herself as “a blunt Quebecer who tells it like it is, which doesn’t always fly on the coast,” while she says “Hannah has this incredible way to put things in words. She’s spent a lot of time building who we are for the community.”

They landed in a new place mid-winter with small children. “We only had so much time to go around mingling and meeting people,” Mel says. Hannah spent the winter building the farm’s website and social media, telling their story. Coming from a teaching farm where Hannah was running a volunteer program, they wanted to open up their new farm to folks wanting to connect with the land. Between the pandemic and working from home, people were “aching to get out into nature. Our story spread like wildfire and we got so many volunteers. Our investor came out of that, too.”

A handful of the folks who started coming in that first year are still coming—“they are really committed and became our community,” Mel says. “We call them friends, we know everything about each other from weeding.” Mel has lived in small communities before, and knows that when you’re new somewhere you have to prove yourself. “People have to ask themselves, ‘Am I going to invest energy in building a relationship with this person?’ I think we’re in the book now!”

Overall, they have found that the community has been very welcoming. “Despite the fact that it’s small here, it’s mighty,” Mel says. “The farmers we’ve met have been very supportive. We can borrow from each other when we run out of pint containers, for example.” This kind of collaboration is especially essential because the Sunshine Coast is not in an agricultural area, and there’s a ferry between them and any supplies.

Community extends beyond their neighbours on the Sunshine Coast. Grounded Acres is certified organic. “The community that raised me as a farmer in BC was the certified organic community,” Mel says. “At a really young farmer age, I got into the importance of organic, and the importance of that community in itself.” Mel went to her first BC Organic conference her first year farming in BC. “It’s always a highlight of my year, not necessarily what I’m learning but who I’m connecting with, who I’m getting to rant with, have a beer with. That precious moment that every farmer needs, to feel that you’re not alone.”

Mel and Hannah started out with laying hens right away to respond to the community’s needs. Credit: Grounded Acres Organic Farm.

For Mel, being certified organic is about more than just what organic means. “At the end of the day we can make those practices happen without having certification, but certification is investing in keeping that community alive, that one thing that gives us a voice, makes us visible, makes us not just a trend.” The organic community in BC specifically has been together for many years, and Mel has “so much respect for the folks that put that system together, and the folks keeping it together.”

While there’s no one recipe to farming, Mel and Hannah have certainly pulled together many key ingredients, from their diverse skills to the people who support their farm in many different ways. “Diversity in the field, diversity in skills” is important, Mel says. “The jack-of-all-trades farmer thing is romanticized a lot, but it’s a harsh reality.” Bringing multiple skill sets and interests to the field is so important—even if someone is just looking for a business partner, don’t look for people who like doing the same things you do, Mel recommends.

“That’s one thing I appreciate about our farm every day. Hannah will put time into doing wholesale with chefs and going to market on the weekend. My favourite thing is to be alone on the farm, and she comes back so excited, it feeds her—and that in turn feeds me.” The foundation of Grounded Acres is the relationship between Mel and Hannah, “romantic partners who are good business partner matches as well, how lucky we are!”

groundedacresfarm.ca

Darcy Smith is the editor of the BC Organic Grower, and a huge fan of organic farmers. She also manages the BC Land Matching Program delivered by Young Agrarians.

Feature image: Queer community setting up tomato tunnels. Credit: Grounded Acres Organic Farm.

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Organic Stories: OMRI

in 2022/Organic Standards/Organic Stories/Summer 2022

Behind the Scenes of Input Approvals

Matt Sircely

This year marks 25 years since the birth of the Organic Materials Review Institute, commonly known as OMRI. Two and a half decades in the organic sector means many lessons learned and advice to keep in mind as organics looks forward to the next quarter century.

Bridging the Certification Gaps

Founding OMRI board member Emily Brown Rosen remembers “when there was no national program, and multiple systems of certification with no accreditation, we had to rely a lot on each other…to try and bridge the gaps and differences. It was all very grassroots, and sometimes the separate tunnel-vision of each group caused problems.”

Early certifier councils helped iron out regional differences and OMRI’s founders intentionally sought broad geographical representation. Brown Rosen served as Policy Director at Pennsylvania Certified Organic before working at the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Organic Program (NOP). The lesson, she says, is “to continue building or participating in new alliances and consensus-building among the various sectors wherever possible.”

In her early 20’s at the time OMRI started, Kim Dietz supplied a handler’s perspective and support from Bill Knudsen’s juice company for preliminary discussions before OMRI’s founding. Review of materials for organic production was “disjointed” before federal regulation, says Dietz. “We brought the standards to the USDA and at the same time, this very active group of people saw that we could fill the gap with material review. I always say we started the National Organic Program with a skeleton and we slowly put the meat on the bones. And it was hard,” she says. “We all brought a strength to the table, and everybody was open to listening. Collectively we agreed on how OMRI should be founded, and the organic community the same way.”

Red Kuri squash. Credit: Moss Dance.

In the early days, Lynn Coody and the late Yvonne Frost from Oregon Tilth were already collaborating on materials lists with Brian Baker and Zea Sonnebend from California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF). Coody explains that OMRI’s founders sought to standardize procedures for reviewing materials by “creating a national generic list, articulating criteria used to review materials, and documenting the steps in the materials review process.”

While not easy, she says, “there was a common understanding among the OMRI founders that we needed to come to solid agreements in order to support the evolution of the organic infrastructure, as well as a crucial trust in the goodwill, experience, and intelligence of our colleagues. I think some of these basic elements of cooperation are largely missing now, and that refocusing on them is the most important thing we can do to prepare for future challenges and opportunities.”

The first certifier councils introduced the West Coast founders to Bill Wolf, then board president of the Organic Foods Production Association of North America (OFPANA later became the Organic Trade Association, or OTA). OFPANA was developing its own organic input list, as was the Organic Crop Improvement Association in the Midwest, represented by the now late Peter Murray. Bill Wolf was elected as OMRI’s first board president, and Murray became vice president. Still farming in Virginia, Wolf says we are at a “critical juncture in the attempts to have harmony in the organic community, because the disharmony has become fractious enough so that there isn’t a good vehicle for having the different forces and belief systems within organic have a conversation. And in a way, OMRI served early on in that role, where everyone was at the table. OMRI could look to be a facilitator for some of that,” says Wolf. “So there’s an opportunity there, not to take a position necessarily, but to have a place for dialogue.”

The now-late Peter Murray, representing OMRI at the Expo East trade show in 1999. Murray held an early certifier seat on the OMRI Board of Directors. Credit: OMRI.

Trust and Unity

In classic startup style, Brian Baker drove with CCOF files in the bed of a pickup from California to Eugene, Oregon to open OMRI’s first office in Coody’s garage. “OMRI had to forego its advocacy role to build a reputation that it is fair, objective, and evidence-based in its evaluations. It was a price worth paying,” Baker says. “The development of organic standards was an inclusive, bottom-up approach that was open and transparent, so OMRI fit within that context. While not entirely based on consensus, the standards reflected broad agreement in many areas.”

Baker describes how the organic movement united in response to the USDA’s first proposed National Organic Program rule in 1997: “The organic community succeeded in meeting that threat head-on. It has not achieved that level of unity since.” Baker reflects that “ever since then, the organic community has been divided over standards issues, many of which are related to materials review.”

Dietz says OMRI should consider how to “step into the ring” to participate and even help facilitate. “The service that OMRI brings is these technical reviews. Very strong, scientific-based minds that can ground—can really bring people to understand a complex issue. If anybody can do it, OMRI can do it.”

Baker remembers OMRI’s initial work to convince organic product manufacturers of the value of sharing information with one trusted entity to gain broad acceptance among certifiers. Now, he sees a similar need for cooperation and information sharing: “Fertilizer and pesticide fraud pose a threat that cannot be ignored. OMRI can’t handle it alone. It will need to collaborate with other materials review organizations, regulatory agencies, and law enforcement. It is now clear that organic fraud is a persistent problem, not as isolated as once thought, and that we are dealing with international organized crime. International cooperation is needed to address a global problem.”

Dietz worked on an OTA task force to develop new anti-fraud tools. “We’ve opened ourselves up for vulnerability in those areas,” she says, noting higher organic prices intrinsically invite fraud. “So we have to protect the supply chain.” She hopes the movement worldwide sees the National Organic Program as “the foundation” for organic standards. “If a country makes their stance and says, ‘You’re not doing that in our country,’ then it could change the other rules, because you want everybody to try to be as harmonious as possible for trade.” OMRI can help, she says, “in those areas where there’s controversy and it’s not settled yet.”

Lettuce seedlings. Credit: Moss Dance.

Building New Bridges

With an eye toward the future, Baker notes the “growing number of OMRI Listed® products that are made, sold, and used entirely within Mexico. It is not clear when or even if the USDA will reach an equivalency agreement with Mexico, or what issues will need to be addressed.” He says a renegotiation between the US and European Union (EU) is “nearly certain” before 2025. “Producers in developing countries would benefit from consistent standards in the US and EU, and many of these are inputs-related,” he says, adding: “I have long seen Canada and Australia as key to the harmonization of international organic standards.”

Towards this international harmonization, Brown Rosen advises to “keep abreast of new developments domestically and internationally. Look for partners and allies that can expand OMRI’s presence.” She notes OMRI could engage the advisory boards of state and federal regulatory agencies in the US and abroad. “It will help if OMRI becomes appreciated by more of the traditional ag regulatory groups, since organic is going more and more mainstream.” Brown Rosen cites “ongoing concerns” about fumigation issues at border crossings and “recent agreements between APHIS, US Customs, and NOP,” and wonders “if there is any role OMRI can provide with education, information, or research.”

Baker explains how OMRI historically hired and trusted talented people, adding that the Advisory Council and Review Panel helped attract expertise. The organic industry is currently experiencing a shortage of qualified people, and “materials review requires a specialized set of skills that requires training. It comes down to having a team of talented, dedicated people who know their stuff.” Baker suggests more technical outreach “to train extension agents and producers to understand the place of materials within an ecological systems approach. OMRI’s role in research and education are vital,” he says, to help producers “be more successful and better stewards of the land, water, and other natural resources.”

“Fundamentally, organic has become a much faster-moving industry than 25 years ago,” says Wolf. “So, capacity to move labels and decisions through the system is really critical.” Organic industry growth represents a “60-fold increase in a fairly short period of time, and to try to measure what that means, and what has to happen to change the paradigm, the fact is the system wasn’t designed to deal with the volume that exists today.”

The proposed standard for inert ingredients signals that many new operations will be brought into the sphere of organic verification, and oversight requirements will increase for some OMRI reviews. The industry now produces “mostly very complex products,” Wolf says. “Pet food, fish, aquatic standards” are among the issue areas that require inputs, along with understanding of those inputs. Streamlining systems is critical, he says, also suggesting flexibility around creating a “Miscellaneous” listing category to accommodate products outside standard listing categories. Hearkening to the naming of OMRI, Wolf stands by his original notion of including “Research.” OMRI could provide efficacy research with “comparisons, trials, and tests to verify that the inputs are exactly what they say they are.”

Coody suggests OMRI convene a think tank to approach challenges both “expansively” and “practically,” and including “organic elders to retain institutional knowledge.” In government-run organic programs, “the regulation of the organic inputs sector is in its early stages, and OMRI can offer extensive experience,” she says, specifically identifying “material review organization accreditation, improved auditing of materials review systems, and preventing and identifying fraud in the input sector. OMRI’s technical expertise is essential in ensuring that inputs are used not only in compliance with organic regulations, but in line with organic principles.”

Brown Rosen recommends more proactive consultation with certification agencies. “Perhaps a small committee of the materials experts from each member agency could meet periodically,” identify unsolved problems, and contribute insights on important issues to the OMRI advisory council. “In addition to certifier materials experts, it would be nice to get some university scientists with appropriate expertise.” If possible, “getting a NOP person on board the advisory council would be very helpful—I did it for a while when I was at NOP (as a non-voting member), so there is precedent.” She says it would help foster communication and offer “insight on potential problem areas coming down the road.”

For each step of organic evolution, “we have to keep the intention, and go back to those organic principles.” Dietz describes an increasing reliance on the private sector to act and lead in accordance with the organic principles. “For OMRI to be successful, for the trade to be successful, we have to continue to do what we think is right.”

Dietz cheers the founders living today: “Active! We’re still active. That was a long time ago, but we’re just as passionate as we were back then. There is no difference. We’re still fighting the good fight. It’s fun. It’s good. We believe in it.”

omri.org

Matt Sircely has written for OMRI since 2006. Most at home in his garden on the Olympic Peninsula, Matt writes songs and performs and teaches mandolin. Over the years he has become a familiar face in the BC fiddle scene.

OMRI supports organic integrity by developing clear information and guidance about materials, so that producers know which products are appropriate for organic operations. OMRI is a non-profit that provides an independent review of products, such as fertilizers, pest controls, livestock health care products, and numerous other inputs that are intended for use in certified organic production and processing. OMRI also provides technical support and training for professionals in the organic industry.

Featured image credit: OMRI

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A Canadian Organic Program to Grow Sustainable Agriculture for Canada and the World

in 2022/Organic Standards/Standards Updates/Summer 2022

Organic Federation of Canada

Canadian farmers are already experiencing serious negative impacts of climate change due to extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, forest fires, and ocean acidification—but resilient agriculture delivers ecological services and sets the path for food security amid climate change turmoil.

In alignment with what the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations proposes in terms of climate-smart agriculture, the Canadian Organic Standards prescribe effective strategies to foster the emergence of a carbon-neutral economy in the food sector.

The Canadian Organic Standards include practices that contribute significantly to reducing our agricultural sector’s greenhouse gas emissions, sequestering atmospheric carbon in soils and increasing biodiversity, while encouraging the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices, increasing agricultural resilience to the effects of climate change (particularly flooding and drought) and increasing farm income.

Canada is considered to be the 6th largest organic market in the world, and organic sales are growing at an impressive rate ($8.1 B in 2020). Despite a steady increase in production, supply is not keeping up with demand, both domestically and internationally. This offers great opportunities for the future.

The Canadian Organic Standards, referenced by law, define ecological agriculture as the basis of the whole industry; the standards need to be maintained and updated. Under the Canada Organic Regime, the Standards Interpretation Committee harmonizes the certification process by providing independent guidance to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) on issues related to the standards.

Since 2017, the Government of Canada has drastically reduced its support for organic agriculture:

  • The Canada Organic Office, created in 2009 by the CFIA to address regulatory issues, was dissolved in 2017.
  • The Organic Value Chain Round Table, mandated to analyze the Canadian organic sector’s competitive position and improve its performance and profitability, was dissolved in 2019 by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC).
  • The Standards Interpretation Committee, created by the CFIA in 2009 and funded by CFIA to provide independent guidance to the industry on issues related to the standards, will see its funding ended in 2023 (reduced by 54% in 21-22 and in 22-23).
  • The Canadian Organic Standards are referenced in the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations. The Canadian General Standards Board, which owns the Standards, requires a mandatory review every five years. But the federal government has not budgeted for future revisions. AAFC clearly states that they will not fund any future review.

The organic industry needs a Canada Organic Program to increase the sustainability of Canadian agriculture, assure access to markets and continue to ensure competitiveness. Other jurisdictions have implemented such programs to support their respective organic industries. The USDA and EU fund the maintenance of their organic standards.1 The USDA funds the Organic Cost Share Certification Program which provides cost share assistance to producers and handlers, and has created the USDA Organic Integrity Database to promote the growth of agricultural ecological practices and prevent fraud. The European Commission has set a target of at least 25% of the EU’s agricultural land under organic farming and a significant increase in organic aquaculture by 2030. In Europe, many countries offer direct support to their organic producers with an annual subsidy per hectare, with the objective of encouraging the maintenance of organic management practices over the long term.

Michelle Tsutsumi in the fields at Golden Ears Farm. Credit: Thomas Buchan.

What a Canada Organic Program will Accomplish

Different support measures are needed to increase Canadian agriculture’s sustainability, assure access to organic markets, and continue to ensure the competitiveness of our organic industry through a Canada Organic Program. An effective Canada Organic Program should include support measures addressing four elements:

  • Market access through a sound regulatory framework
  • Growth in capacity
  • Increased funding for organic research and knowledge transfer
  • Recognition of the organic sector’s contribution to sustainability
  • Market Access Through A Sound Regulatory Framework

The Canadian Organic Standards are owned by the Canadian General Standards Board (CGSB) and establish the requirements that agricultural producers and food processors must meet to ensure the legitimacy of Canadian organic products. This allows Canadian businesses to access markets, both in Canada and internationally, by ensuring that their organic claims are true. The Standards, put in place by the Safe Food for Canadians Regulation are thus the basis of the entire regulatory and certification system surrounding organic products, both for products sold outside their province of origin and for imported and exported products.

The CGSB Policy and Procedures Manual states that every standard shall be reviewed every five years. An unrevised standard is no longer relevant and a standard that has been published for more than five years cannot be amended (CGSB Manual clause 6.11.9). The CGSB may withdraw a standard if there are insufficient funds to update it (6.12.1), or if maintenance of the standard no longer meets CGSB requirements (6.12.2.3).

Canada establishes organic equivalency arrangements with other countries only if the signatories determine that the two regulatory systems involved, including their standards, assure that equivalent principles and outcomes are achieved in both jurisdictions.2 The Canadian organic industry cannot remain competitive if the Standards are not reviewed periodically to remain comparable to the standards of other countries, and equivalency agreements could be withdrawn. This would compromise access to international markets for Canadian organic products.

Funding for Five-Year Reviews of the Standards

The Canadian Organic Standards have been reviewed twice, once in 2015 and a second time in 2020.

For the first review in 2015, the Assurance Systems Stream under the AgriMarketing Program through AAFC contributed $297,414 to the Organic Federation of Canada (OFC) to cover part of the cost. Fundraising to industry stakeholders led by the OFC contributed $83,490 in cash, while stakeholders’ in-kind contributions amounted to a total of $16,062. The costs incurred by the CGSB were covered by the Standards Council of Canada.

For the 2020 Standards review process, AAFC’s Canadian Agricultural Adaptation Program, a program that has since been terminated, funded a total of $292,554 to the OFC. Industry cash contributions amounted to $59,000 and in-kind contributions were $39,000. AAFC also covered CGSB costs, a budget of over $200,000.

Government funding of the Standards review through ad hoc programs is not viable in the long-term. In 2022, the federal government is asking industry to pay for the costs of future Standards review work itself. However, industry funding of the Standards review is seen as a threat to the independence and integrity of the process. Also, there is no funding mechanism, such as a check-off program, that allows all operators and industry stakeholders to contribute equitably to the funding of the review work.

The USDA and EU publicly fund the review of their organic standards without any financial contributions from industry. If the Canadian organic sector were to attempt to cover the cost of reviewing the Canadian Organic Standards, Canada will be at a competitive disadvantage with stakeholders in competing countries.

Considering all these factors, the Canadian government needs to implement a Canada Organic Program that assures the independence of the review process by instituting permanent government funding for the mandatory five-year reviews of the Standards imposed by CGSB.

 

The Regulatory Role of the Standards Interpretation Committee

The Standards Interpretation Committee harmonizes the certification process by providing clarification to the CFIA when certified operators and Certification Bodies ask questions about the standards.

The Standards Interpretation Committee must be an independent, credible and impartial entity. The Committee must be funded by the CFIA, not by industry. Rather than abolishing the funding provided to the Standards Interpretation Committee since 2009, the Canadian government should maintain and even increase funding. This support is important to harmonize the certification process, maintain its independence, and accelerate the work of the Committee so questions can be answered in a timely fashion.

A Canada Organic Regime Integrity Database

Listing the certified organic operators under the Canada Organic Regime on a national database comparable to the USDA Organic Integrity Database will promote the growth of agricultural ecological practices and prevent fraud. This can only be accomplished by government.

Growth in Capacity

The government of Canada invests in organic businesses through various programs that are not specifically targeted towards organic production and processing. However, businesses producing organic products may have specific needs. Investing in organic processing and distribution capacity is essential to guarantee the supply to meet a growing demand for organic products, both in Canada and internationally.

Also, AAFC’s AgriMarketing Program provides funds to facilitate market connections between farmers and buyers and increase international market development. This type of funding needs to be increased through the Canada Organic Program to focus on organic market connections and development.

Increased Funding for Research and Knowledge Transfer

Organic agriculture should be recognized as a driving force in developing agricultural practices designed to conserve soil, water, and biodiversity. To support the adoption of such practices by the greater farming community, the government of Canada needs to aim long-term resilience of agroecosystems to climate change and to share the risk between farm businesses and society. This involves substantial support for research and knowledge transfer in organic practices.

Offering more government funding for research that seeks a greater understanding of agroecosystems, looks to develop alternatives to fossil fuel-based inputs, and increases on-farm technical assistance for organic practices, through a Canada Organic Program, is thus more than justified.

Recognition of the Organic Sector’s Contribution to Sustainability

The European Commission’s “Farm to Fork” strategy for a fair, healthy, and environmentally friendly food system aims to allocate at least 25% of EU farmland to organic farming by 2030. To achieve this, an action plan includes direct support for organic production, on the basis of an annual payment per hectare, to encourage the maintenance of practices associated with organic farming, ensuring their implementation over the long term. This type of measure applies significant leverage on the rate of conversion to organic agriculture. Very often, the payments per hectare are justified by the reward for positive externalities and partly financed by the deployment of taxes on pesticides.

A Canada Organic Program needs to include the recognition of, and financial compensation for, ecological goods and services and health and societal benefits associated with organic farm management practices.

In North America, although there is more support focused on investment assistance and relatively less action in favour of environmental payments, the USDA funds the Organic Cost Share Certification Program, which provides cost share assistance to producers and handlers of agricultural products who are obtaining or renewing their certification. Certified operations may be reimbursed for up to 50% of their certification costs paid during the program year. Because this program is based on recurrent assistance, not just support for transitional growers, it supports the practice of keeping land certified for years to come.

In order for Canadian organic businesses to remain competitive, a Canada Organic Program needs to implement a certification cost-share program to organic operators, offering, at minimum, the same benefits as those in the equivalent Farm Bill program.

Towards an Organic Future

In all countries with a structured organic sector, the budget devoted directly or indirectly to the development of organic agriculture is increasing. In general, assistance programs in favour of maintaining good practices are multiplying to sustain a form of agriculture that meets the challenges of sustainable development and climate change.

A Canada Organic Program is a must: organic agriculture maintains soil health, prevents climate change and promotes biodiversity. This is the responsibility of our federal government as this affects organic consumers, processors, and the thousands of farmers who grow organic food and feed.

Feature image: Arzeena Hamir cleaning Annie Jackson beans. Credit: Thomas Buchan.

References
1. Union des producteurs agricoles (2021). Benchmarking of support measures for organic farming in Quebec to other jurisdictions. upa.qc.ca/wp-content/uploads/filebase/Benchmarking_support_measures_organic_farming_Quebec_to_other_jurisdictions_2021-04.pdf
2. Organic equivalency arrangements with other countries (CFIA, 2021) inspection.canada.ca/organic-products/equivalence-arrangements/eng/1311987562418/1311987760268

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Ag Tech Breaking Down Barriers

in 2022/Climate Change/Crop Production/Grow Organic/Spring 2022/Tools & Techniques

By Crystal Arsenault

Innovative technology for agriculture is all the buzz these days and farmers appear receptive to trying new things in an effort to increase their profits as well as make better decisions that support the mitigation of climate change. But, for many, the hard decision is which tech to invest in. Not only does new tech usually involve a financial commitment, but there is inevitably a time commitment as well—time taken away from farming to learn the new technology, set it up, then use it as part of your daily routine in order to hopefully gain some insights and benefits a year or so down the road. It can be challenging to determine which tech is best for your specific operation, and all too often money and time are spent only to discover that the program was built to sell you a product and doesn’t actually benefit you individually. Not all programs are created equally.

Luckily for farmers, many innovative products are now available with farmers and the environment in mind—and best of all, they don’t cost a dime. Two such tools are Organic BC’s online organic certification program, iCertify, and UBC’s farm management program, LiteFarm.

Both programs are helping to break barriers to organic certification and encourage sustainable farming practices. iCertify is now in its third year of use, with all regional Organic BC certifying bodies onboarded. LiteFarm has recently released an update that will directly benefit organic growers.

Record keeping has often been seen as a barrier to organic certification for many new operators. Sitting down for a little light reading of the Canadian Organic Standards while trying to find and purchase land as well as starting a new business is intimidating. iCertify walks new applicants through the certification process with a simple question and answer format. It includes a multitude of references to the standard for quick access to information that is relevant to your operation.

Additionally, iCertify provides premade record keeping templates. No more wasted time trying to design forms yourself that meet all the requirements. Available for download within iCertify and on the Organic BC website, these ready-made forms take the guess work out of certification. They help inform operators about the specific information they need to track in order to demonstrate compliance. At the same time, these templates provide the certification committee and verification officers a standardized version of the exact information they need to complete a comprehensive review.

But wait, it gets better yet. Imagine not even having to fill out the form yourself! LiteFarm has been developed with iCertify and organic certification at the forefront. Through a collaborative project with UBC, LiteFarm can now generate several of the standardized templates used in organic production. With one click your Seed Records, Input Records, product compliance documents, maps and more, are created, downloaded, and ready to upload directly into iCertify.

LiteFarm is a free, open-source farm management program designed for biodiverse operations and includes insights about on farm biodiversity, sustainable farm practices, profits, and even tracks labour cost per crop. To save time for busy farmers, LiteFarm has an extensive database of crop stats provided by researchers from UBC. Creating a crop management plan is as simple as selecting a crop and picking a seeding date. From there, LiteFarm will automatically create seeding, transplanting, and harvest tasks directly on your calendar To Do list. Additional tasks, such as soil amendments, preventative pest treatments, hand weeding, and more can be added at any time and easily assigned to farm workers. Multiple users including owners, supervisors, and farm workers each have individual role-based access. Users have the ability to see tasks that have been assigned to them, indicate in real time when they have been completed, log work hours, and leave notes about crop concerns, all on their mobile phones or desktop.

LiteFarm tracks seeding dates, amendment product use, dates and location, harvest, and quantity information, all easily accessible by verification officers when performing volume and traceback audits on any crop being managed at your farm.

Anonymous, aggregated data can be used to drive further research into the benefits of specific farming practices and help users quantify and analyze their own reliance on purchased inputs, labour, and more.

Designed for and by farmers, these tools are breaking down the barriers to organic certification and helping more farmers see the benefits of transitioning to regenerative organic management practices.

Crystal Arsenault is the technical advisor for Organic BC, UX designer and organic subject matter consultant.  Having owned a certified organic farm as well as working in tech design, Crystal has a unique perspective on challenges faced by both industries as we attempt to unite the two in order to quantify sustainable farm management practices.

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Federal Government Set to Abandon Organic Agriculture

in 2021/Fall 2021/Grow Organic/Organic Standards/Standards Updates

By Jim Robbins

The Canadian government is dropping funding for the review and interpretation of the Canadian Organic Standards (COS). The Standards must be updated every five years in order to remain relevant to evolving organic practice and in order to be useful in organic equivalency agreements with other countries.

Agriculture and Agri-food Canada (AAFC) did contribute significantly to the 2015 and 2020 reviews of the COS, but it has alerted the organic sector that it will not fund any future reviews and will insist that the organic industry pay for this mandatory process, a budget of over $1M every five years. Moreover, Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau has confirmed that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) will drop funding of the Standards Interpretation Committee, which has been funded since 2009 by the CFIA. This committee resolves disputes between certification bodies and organic operators, and prevents fraud and misinterpretation of organic practices.

AAFC claims that they support maintenance of assurance systems related to sustainability as they look to make industry more resilient and competitive, and that there is much to be drawn from the organic sector. They argue that they have funded projects submitted by organic organizations for market development, strengthening of organic supply chains, development of the National Organic Ingredient Strategy, and a few other projects over the past ten years.

However, without the COS, which is the skeleton of the whole organic industry, these contributions will have no future impact. A lapsed Standard will not convince consumers to buy Canadian organic food, nor will it convince importers of organic food in other countries to buy Canadian; in fact, it will make it impossible.

American and European organic operators do not have to lobby their respective governments every five years for funding of the maintenance and enforcement of their organic standards. On the contrary, the United States Department of Agriculture directly funds the administration of their National Organic Program. The European Commission has a Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development, which is responsible for developing and managing the European Union organic production framework, including an expert group for technical advice.

Organic agriculture is recognized as an efficient tool for reducing greenhouse gases, building soils, and enhancing biodiversity. Amid a summer of drought and fires threatening food production in many Canadian provinces, organic systems offer a method of reducing agriculture’s impact on the environment while sustainably producing high quality food.

However, without an ongoing organic standard defining what organic production systems are, and without a fair enforcement mechanism protecting organic integrity, organic agriculture lacks the tools that it needs to maintain growth and provide the ecological services it is capable of producing.

Jim is an organic producer from Delisle, Saskatchewan, growing field crops and raising cattle. He has been President of the Organic Federation of Canada since 2016.

Feature image: Photo: Seedlings at Amara Farm. Credit: Michaela Parks

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Regenerative Agriculture is the Way of the Future

in 2021/Grow Organic/Organic Community/Organic Standards/Spring 2021

Certification is Helping Define Best Practices

Travis Forstbauer

This article first appeared in Country Life in BC and is reprinted here with gratitude.

Soil health is the foundation of any healthy organic farm. While modern agriculture has primarily focused on nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, soil health from an organic perspective focuses on the health and diversity of microscopic and macroscopic life in the soil.

The foundation of all life is carbon, so on an organic farm, soil health can often be directly related to soil organic matter (soil carbon). So, it is with cautious optimism that the BC Association for Regenerative Agriculture (BCARA) welcomes the renewed focus on regenerative agriculture.

Use of the term “regenerative agriculture” has exploded over the past few years. However, this is not a new philosophy. In North America, Indigenous peoples had been practicing forms of regenerative agriculture for thousands of years before the Europeans came and settled. In more recent times, during the early 20th century after the industrialization of agriculture, European farmers were noticing significant decreasing crop yields. Rudolf Steiner attributed this in part to depleted soil health and gave instruction that laid the foundation for biodynamic agriculture, a regenerative system of agriculture dedicated to building soil life.

Then through the mid to late 20th century, pioneers like J.I. Rodale, Lady Balfour, Robert Rodale, and the lesser-known Ehrenfried Pfeiffer championed organic agriculture practices that, at their heart, were regenerative. Through the 1980s and 1990s this movement blossomed to what is known as organic agriculture.

In 1986, as part of the early organic agriculture movement, a group of farmers in the Fraser Valley organized themselves to create the BCARA. An early definition of regenerative agriculture that they settled on was:

BCARA went on to become a leader in the early organic movement in BC, where, at the grassroots of organic agriculture, was the belief that every organic farm should strive to be regenerative in its practices. Soil health expressed as life in the soil, has always been the foundation of organic agriculture.

“Regenerative Agriculture is both a philosophy and a farm management system. Philosophically, it says that there is within people, plants, animals and the world itself a way of recovery that both comes from within and carries the recovery process beyond previous levels of well-being. Robert Rodale says, “Regeneration begins with the realization that the natural world around us is continually trying to get better and better.

Over the past 30 years much has changed in both organic and conventional agriculture and over the past few years the term “regenerative agriculture” has been loosely used for a variety of farming systems. There is a general understanding that a regenerative farming system captures carbon and helps to mitigate climate change. There are many organizations that have jumped onto this wave of regenerative agriculture. But the term “regenerative agriculture” is not regulated like the term organic. There is no governing body overseeing the use of this term and as a result it has been loosely used and often misused and this is of concern to BCARA.”

Travis Forstbauer on the farm. Credit: Forstbauer Farm

There are some that believe that no-till agriculture systems are more regenerative than organic systems that perform some tillage. However, we fundamentally disagree with this assertion. Many of these no-till systems still rely on toxic herbicides such as glyphosate, and while we applaud agriculture producers’ actions to build soil life, capture carbon, and mitigate climate change, BCARA holds the position that any form of agriculture with the goal to be regenerative should have a foundation of organic practices.

BCARA believes that the healthiest, cleanest food is produced in a regenerative agricultural system, without the use of herbicides, pesticides, and agrochemicals. Regenerative agriculture strives to be a closed loop system whereas the production of these agrochemicals is CO2 intensive and are often produced long distances from the farm.

In the US, a regenerative agriculture standard has been developed called Regenerative Organic Certification (ROC). This certification requires the operation to be certified organic to be designated as regenerative. Certification is on a tiered system of bronze, silver, and gold. The farm is granted certification based on how many regenerative practices they use on their farm as defined in the ROC standard. It is our view that this is the gold standard of regenerative certification.

Currently, there are countless researchers, soil advocates, and organizations doing the much-needed work to shift the collective focus of agriculture towards regenerative practices. These people and organizations include Gabe Brown, Elaine Ingham, Matt Powers, Zach Bush of Farmers Footprint, Maria Rodale and the Rodale Institute, Ryland Engelhart and Finnian Makepeace from the film Kiss the Ground, the Regenerative Organic Alliance, the Canadian Organic Trade Association, and the list goes on and on.

Much like organic agriculture has evolved, the understanding of regenerative agriculture will continue to evolve and BCARA looks forward to being a leading voice for regenerative agriculture in BC.

Travis Forstbauer is president of BCARA, an organic certification body that certifies farms and businesses across the province of BC. He farms alongside his wife and children, his father Hans, his brother Niklaus and his family, sister Rosanna and many other family members throughout the growing season. Together they steward Forstbauer Farm, a multigenerational, certified organic, biodynamic farm located in Chilliwack.

Feature image: Cows in field. Credit: Forstbauer Farm

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Certification Coordinator Welcomes New Online System With Open Arms!

in 2020/Grow Organic/Organic Community/Organic Standards/Standards Updates/Summer 2020/Tools & Techniques

Corinne Impey

When it comes to growing, organic certification, and supporting local operators, Cara Nunn could be considered an expert. She has also seen many changes over her 20-year career in the organic industry.

Cara is the Certification Coordinator for the North Okanagan Organics Association (NOOA) and the Similkameen Okanagan Organic Producers Association (SOOPA).

“My interest in growing began at a very young age as a child raised on a market garden in the Lake District of the Okanagan,” says Cara, who has a professional background in biogeography and experience working as a Managing Agrologist in the ginseng industry.

Cara started working with NOOA in 1997 and later expanded her work to include SOOPA. Now, nearly 23 years later, Cara continues to support organic growers and operators. Most recently, Cara has been helping her operators with the switch to iCertify, COABC’s newly launched online organic certification and renewal system. At the same time, she has been learning new skills and processes related to the administration of the online program.

“The system has come together better than I could have asked for,” says Cara. Having participated in the initial system development as well as many system demos, feedback gathering sessions, and testing, Cara played an active role in the project. “I really appreciate the input we had in developing the questions and format,” she says.

“The system is very robust and extremely capable,” says Cara. She acknowledges that at times, it can be a bit daunting, but “the iCertify Technical Advisor has been invaluable in getting answers and finding how to navigate the system.”

Regardless of any challenges related to learning a new system, she says the move to online certification is important. “I see the biggest benefit being an integrated location for all operator information: files, emails, communications, uploads, reports. Everything—chronological and orderly!”

“Record management has been heading this way for decades,” says Cara. “And the benefits go beyond the certification bodies.”

“The ability to provide details about our industry to government and funding bodies will provide a stronger voice for organics. It is also important for ourselves to have an integrated, clear system to verify integrity of organics to our own members and within our industry.”

Looking ahead, Cara is anticipating the launch of a new feature in iCertify: a database of approved inputs that will become available this summer. This database will be managed under the COABC umbrella of certification bodies and will be accessible to COABC members.

“To be able to offer an ongoing list of approved inputs and products throughout the community and have it accessible to our producers will keep the knowledge flowing,” says Cara. “It will also streamline the time involved in verifying products that may have already been looked at by another certification body.”

“Pooling resources and building community is a strength of the BC Certified Organic Program that I am happy to support.”

Funding for this project has been provided by the Governments of Canada and British Columbia through the Canadian Agricultural Partnership, a federal-provincial-territorial initiative. The program is delivered by the Investment Agriculture Foundation of BC.

Feature image: Cara Nunn building her new greenhouse. Credit: Maia Nunn

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