Organic Farming and the Age of the "Locavore" Movement- Getting Started in Organic Farming 2015

With 2014 coming to a close, it is time to look at what educational opportunities CT NOFA is offering in the new year!

On January 24th CT NOFA will be heading to Connecticut College for the 10th annual Getting Started in Organic Farming Conference where there will be a ah-mazing line up of speakers to motivate attendees to start their careers in organic agriculture. 

Organic Farming and the Age of the "Locavore" Movement

Presented by Patrick Horan, Waldingfield Farm

A discussion about the "locavore" movement , and how organic food production was a principle reason for the local food movement's rise in the Northeast. But cost of production and the availability of locally produced conventional product has made it increasingly difficult to survive. How do we survive?

Patrick has been working at Waldingfield full time since 2006. He is responsible for all marketing, sales, and operations, as well as day to day farming duties. He and wife and son, Suzie and Griffin, divide their time between Brooklyn, NY, and Washington. CT.

Winter Conference Teaser: Improving Food Access, Raised Bed Gardens and Seed Saving!

The Winter Conference is 3 1/2 months away!

We will begin counting down to CT NOFA's largest celebration of local and organic food, farming and community with a glimpse into to line-up each week showcasing a few workshops we have recently announced.  

Improving Food Access Through Farmers Markets, CSAs, and Mobile MarketsDan Gregory & Pauline Zaldonis
"In this workshop, we will give an overview of Hartford Food System's efforts to improve food access in the City of Hartford. We will also go over various low-income inclusive CSA models and how to increase market revenue by accessing state and federal initiatives such as SNAP, WIC, and FMNP."

Dan Gregory is the farm manager for the urban farm, Grow Hartford. The farm offers subsidized low-income CSA shares and sells at local farmers markets in Hartford. Pauline Zaldonis is the program coordinator of the Hartford Mobile Market and policy analyst for Hartford Food System.

The Food Safety Modernization Act, Round 2; Your comments are critical, again!

By Bill Duesing 

Both organic and conventional foods can be a source of food poisoning outbreaks. However, in an organic system, there’s a much higher level of microbial biodiversity, so there are more naturally beneficial microbes in the system and soil.

Studies show that when you introduce pathogens into an organic system, they often don’t survive very long because the biologically rich community of organisms that’s naturally there either competes effectively with them or uses them for lunch.

 -Charles Benbrook, a research professor at Washington State University’s Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources in Pullman.

We all want our food to be "safe."  We expect those mixed greens we buy for our salads to be free of microbes that could make us sick.  That's the case whether we pick up a plastic package of conventional mesclun which comes from the other side of the country or our organic CSA share, freshly mixed from produce of several neighboring farms. *(See #2 below.)

In September, as part of its implementation of the Food SafetyModernization Act (FSMA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued the second versions of the two Rules which apply to fresh fruits and vegetables which are normally eaten raw.  The Produce Rule applies to farms.  The Preventative Controls Rule applies to facilities which process food.  In the rules there are many references to RACs.  Those are raw agricultural commodities. The extensive Table 1 in the appendix lists all the different things that are done to RACs and whether they are classified as harvest activities or processing activities.

FDA will accept comments from farmers, eaters, handlers and researchers on these new versions until December 15, 2014. Your comments are critically important.