Join the Real Organic Project Movement!

Published: Feb 2025
By: Caroline Wright

Encountering Organic

The pull into organic farming comes with an encounter – something clicks and you experience the beauty in the all-encompassing system of agriculture; the labor that transforms you and connects you more deeply to your environment and food. For me, it was a gravitational pull, as I worked on a farm during a summer in college. After months of stationary studying I felt liberated working outside, utilizing my whole being through the giving and receiving that comes from the art that is farming – the implicit connection that forges within self, place, and community. Little did I know that this encounter would plunge me into a life in organic farming. The work of the Real Organic Project drew me in – I left full-time farming to work on the certification team as the Midwest Regional Inspector in May of 2024. Since working with Real Organic, I have learned so much about the broader history, successes, and struggles surrounding Organic. I hope you catch the inspiration too!

The Roots of Organic

The Organic movement started with farmers. Organic practices are and were indigenous practices that communities across the globe had preserved for generations prior to the Organic movement. When the shift to industrial agriculture, utilizing synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, came to fruition in the mid 1900s, the first publications countering those practices and promoting Organic farming surfaced. On the heels of these industrial changes came social changes as well, and a growing concern for human health and ecology. From the beginning of the Organic movement, soil health has been central, and has been the foundation of human, animal, and community health. Organic farmers have always understood that increasing soil health means more nutritious food, robust plants and animals, and healthier humans! The spirit of Organic has always been to continually improve the ecosystem around us by the way we farm – to raise the bar, keep learning, and develop our systems. Organic has taken shape and evolved since its informal beginnings. Formalized organic certification grew from a collaborative effort run by farmers in the 70s, to a government run program in 2000. Since then, the National Organic Program (NOP) has owned Organic certification and created its standards.

Why the Real Organic Project Formed

When these standards came to bend in accommodation with corporate interests, a fork in the road presented itself. Would we as an organic community accept hydroponic and CAFO systems as healthy practice, or would we choose to defend our core beliefs that introduced the concept of organic to the American consumer in the first place? The great debate on hydroponics in organic has been going on for 14 years: a chemical-based production system that trades living soil for containers. The Real Organic Project was born out of this struggle. In 2010, the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) voted on whether to prohibit hydroponic production in organic. In a vote of 8-7, the proposal did not pass, as a ⅔ vote is needed. Despite hydroponic not being written into organic standards, it was interpreted as being allowed. Within the next 2-3 years we started to see hydroponic being certified as organic, and continues to be certified today. You can imagine our disappointment as we have seen the NOP standards erode, giving way to the flood of large corporations profiting from the success of the organic movement.

In 2018, Real Organic Project formed as a farmer-led, grassroots movement to propel the organic movement as a whole forward, rooted in integrity. We manage a free add-on certification for certified Organic farmers, produce a podcast where we interview organic farmers, journalists, climate experts, policy makers, and chefs, and write a weekly newsletter about what is happening in our food system. We want to uplift and create space in the market for independently-owned farms going above and beyond in their Organic practices. We are stronger together! Ten USDA certifiers have now signed the Soil Statement to Keep the Soil in Organic alongside us. We have partnered with six so far for combined NOP and Real Organic renewal inspections, and hope to collaborate with the other four as we continue to grow our movement.

Our Standards

Real Organic Project farmers know that better food comes from growing in healthy, complex living soils and by raising animals on well managed pasture. Our standards include soil health, pasture management, animal welfare, worker welfare, and a commitment to organic practices across the whole farm.

Join our Movement!

The fabric of our movement is our farmers. They weave intention, inspiration, and community into our work. “We’re asking entirely new questions. We’re thinking in terms of whole systems. We’re understanding how systems are interconnected from what we do in our soils, to the microbes on the leaf surface of the plants we’re growing, and then to people who are consuming the very physical-biological culture of our farm. Those things are part of responsible stewarding of this planet and human health for generations to come.” - Paul Muller, Full Belly Farm, CA

“At Featherstone Farm, we believe that standards of organic production should be sky high and aspirational. They should drive us to reach higher and do better with our crops and livestock, with our soils and our farm ecosystems. Lowest common denominator standards serve industry more than integrity, profit more than people. Real Organic certification reflects who we really are at Featherstone Farm… always has, always will.”
-Jack Hedin, Featherstone Farm, MN

We would love for you to join us! Real Organic Project certification is FREE for farmers, and is an add-on label to USDA Organic. The application takes about 20 minutes to complete. You will receive an initial farm inspection (1 hour), reapply for certification each year (10 minutes), and be reinspected every 5 years. While our process is simple, our integrity is high. Apply for Real Organic Project Certification today! Please reach out to me with any questions, or if you would like to connect: caroline@realorganicproject.org.