> Can you document the cost you are paying to whom for what period of time?
> Please document the inspections and paperwork that you as a grower are
> called on to perform. Let me inform you Sal that one of the reasons the
> Proposed Organic Rule was returned from Office of Management and Budget to
> USDA and did not get passed on for a final rule is USDA staff had requested
> too much paperwork from farmers and handlers. If duplication of inspections,
> paperwork and fees are being charged in California now, bringing it out now
> will acquaint the USDA staff and the Secretary with an unacceptable State
> program. I will point out to you as long as two years ago I was told by the
Sal is busy trying to make a living as a small organic farmer, hobbled
by a quagmire of red tape and high taxes imposed on him by parasitic
bureaurocrats. Why add more paper pushing to his work load. Why don't
you represent his interests for him in dialog with OFPA & USDA. I thought
this was what you were supposed to be doing through your OFMA
organization and with the federal grant given to the National Organic
Marketing Cooperative Feasability Study. Perhaps you can describe how the
organic growers in this country benefitted from this project?
You are mostly preaching to the choir when you tell me about the benefits
of OFPA (in its ideal form, which has yet to evolve). The emerging
certified organic agriculture industry will be one of the best
things that will have ever happened to the US and the rest of the world.
It must accomodate, fairly, the small farmer, though.
There is certainly hope for Texas and for North Carolina, California and
the other states as well, hopefully. How do we organic growers go about
helping to duplicate in our own states what has been done in Texas? Can
you, I, Sal and others collaborate to describe a step by step
way to go about this, document it and put it on the Web in our respective
pages? This has to be a collaborative effort and one that all of us can
afford to spend enough time on for it to be effective. Yours and a few
other's posts in this thread represent a large body of information useful
to growers seeking to benefit from the organic label.
> Lastly, as I spoke before the USDA/NOP is the potential permanent remedy for
> such burdens being placed on organic farmers and handlers. The time is now
> upon us, the public comment period, in the next months to clearly prevent
> such miscarriages of regulatory authority, whether on the State or Federal
> level, as you indicate.
This can be done. How, exactly, do we help each state implement the OFPA
fairly and effectively.
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Lawrence F. London, Jr. - InterGarden - Venaura Farm
mailto:london@sunSITE.unc.edu - mailto:llondon@bellsouth.net
http://sunSITE.unc.edu/InterGarden
http://sunSITE.unc.edu/InterGarden/permaculture.html
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