Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
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the fact that the farm is organic may help, too. “I think the workers know a
little bit more. I think the people are attracted to the higher wage. People are
always coming and asking about work. I am usually pretty cautious about
hiring people. I usually let Efrain make the decision. I talk to him and he
selects people when we add to our workforce.”
The paperwork necessary for certification can be time-consuming. “It is
a fair amount of work. Certainly in an operation like ours, where we need
to keep track of all the inputs. We do have that computerized. I am keeping
track of all that material; anything that is done on a daily basis and put it
into a field journal. Then Robin will take that field journal, and the ones that
are inputs, like seed, or transplants, fertility inputs, compost. . . . She takes
those journal entries and puts them into the computer so we have, or we
can make, an on-farm input report easily now. So at least that helps. I have
other people helping me now. I used to do all that myself, and it was quite
a bit of work. Terence has a good record system for tracking all of our sales.
All of our invoices have all the organic information: grown in accordance,
CCOF certified. So we are covering a lot of those bases usually the inspection
goes rather smoothly. We are improving our paperwork all the time. It takes
a lot of effort, there is a lot of work, but it seems like we have a fairly good
handle on that now.”
The farm is certified to both the California organic standard, and the
international IFOAM standard, which is not really necessary. Terence explains
that the real value of the international certification is that “it really helps
when you want to sell out of the country and since we don't really do that,
IFOAM certification doesn't really benefit us financially. But Phil is liking to
be on the cutting edge of certification. He likes to be one cut higher than
what is required of him. So I think for him it is more an ideological thing
as opposed to a financial reason to grow to IFOAM standards.”
Phil has been active in the California certification agency, which has
helped him meet other organic growers. “Well, I go to various meetings
with CCOF and there is a chance to interact with other growers. I am on the
certification standards committee, I used to be on the board of directors. So
I got to visit people from all over California, because it is a chapter-based
organization. So I got to meet a lot of people over the years, rub elbows with
them.”
It is good to meet with other organic growers since they can exchange
information. Phil says it is difficult to get good information on organic
farming, and when he started he “read all those topics out there. Topics that
people had written for organic farming. The Eliot Coleman topic on organic
gardening, I got a lot of information out of there that I could use. A lot of
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