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Vallis Veg does not have organic certification. We've looked into certification and decided against it for three reasons:
- there are many aspects of the organic movement with which we agree, but it has geared itself to large scale farming and existing distribution networks. We believe its focus should shift to an emphasis on small-scale farming and more local distribution - and that it is 'conventional' farmers, not agroecological farmers, who should properly be certified
- organic certification places a lot of emphasis on auditing input provenance, which makes sense with long product chains. In our case, though, we grow farm produce and then sell it direct to customers. With such a short product chain we think it's better for us to deal with any customer queries about our production methods directly ourselves, rather than rely on third party approval.
- organic certification is expensive for small-scale producers such as ourselves, and - wrongly, in our opinion - the fee schedules are structured in such a way that costs are higher for small-scale producers relative to large-scale producers
Virtually all of our growing practices are consistent with organic principles, and in many cases go beyond them. The produce that we buy in to supplement our veg boxes is always certified organic, except occasionally when we buy from local gardeners who we trust. We're very happy to answer any questions that customers may have about our growing practices, or to arrange for a site visit.
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