Organic Certification?

SweetSong Groves has carefully examined the requirements for organic certification, and decided that it is not for us. Please understand that we are not opposed to organic certification in principle, or indeed to most of its requirements. We buy organic vegetables for our own consumption, and consider organic certification a generally beneficial policing practice against some of the more outrageous practices of industrial agriculture. Still, it is not for us because:

1. Organic certification would cost us somewhere in the neighborhood of one thousand dollars a year, without any real-world benefit for our customers.
2. Organic requirements would place pointless artificial constraints on our growing practices. For example, we use chelated minor elements as a foliar spray on some of our fruit trees. The chelated form facilitates absorption, allowing us to address subtle minor element deficiencies using only tiny amounts of foliar spray with no impact on our ecology. But as a “chemical” fertilizer, this spray is forbidden under organic certification– this is philosophy, not ecology.  Sometimes products are forbidden because they are not “listed”, even though they are exactly the same substance as another, and generally more expensive, “listed” brand. We understand that this is motivated by the need to avoid toxic additives and contaminants, and indeed we prefer and generally use listed products, but it is senseless to ship large amounts of soil amendments from far away when the same material is available as an unlisted but locally available product.
3. Organic production allows the use of certain toxic products, provided that they are “natural”. We consider this a pointless distinction. Toxic is toxic, and we avoid these agents, organic or not.

Our practices are in most ways consistent with organic certification, and in some ways are even more restrictive. We call our approach ecological horticulture. Please see this page for details.