How can organic farmers, growers and the processors who deal with organic food improve and develop their skills in a climate of learning rather than fear?
One approach that seems to be gathering momentum is mentoring. At present we have certification, inspections and occasional spot checks. But many feel unhappy with this limited method.
One organic farmer waxing lyrical about the mentored approach is Joe Condon. Joe has a Galloway beef herd at the foot of the Knockmealdown mountains, and is prominent in the certification body, IOFGA. He produces and sells highly acclaimed beef and beef burgers direct, through both local farmers� markets and through a nationwide delivery scheme.
Joe�s overall approach is very low impact and extensive; he also avoids the big industrial abattoirs and instead uses a local artisan butcher.
Indeed it was the skills of small scale local butchers, as much as the organic inspection process, that prompted Joe to start talking to me about mentoring at the recent All-Ireland farmers� market conference in Athlone:
�These small scale guys, they are highly skilled, and there aren�t many of them out there. But they live in fear of inspections. Surely there is a way to help them along, to train and improve them, to preserve their skills, rather that this school teacher approach we have at the moment�
�Mentoring could be a parallel process to inspection�you could take the top guys in their field, in each category: they could form a group in their area, and mentor those fellas coming in. It would make life easier for inspectors. If you are properly trained and mentored, you�re better at your job. In the inspection process, confusion can occur over small stuff.�
The benefit of this approach is that the best in a particular field would get to give practical help: �An inspector might not be a skilled farmer, and might not know the issues.�
Nevertheless, it seems ludicrous that inspectors, during the inspection process, are not allowed give advice to farmers on how they can improve their work.
Joe feels that there are gaps that need to be filled, but the language used and the approaches taken need to be subtle and well thought out. I also put it to Joe that there are some organic regional and sector-specific producer groups already, doing this skills-sharing to some extent:
�Even in these specialist and regional producer groups, people don�t admit that they are short of certain skills. People don�t want to admit that they are lax in certain areas.�
I know this to be the case myself, in my own non-organic related work, where I organise training for the Greenbox, the ecotourism project in the north-west. Various product providers once got �training�- now they get �capacity building�. This latter phrase suggests that already skilled people get to improve and develop in their area of expertise.
But it�s not just semantics: capacity building also involves doing different things, including for example one-to-one mentoring in various business skills and learning about examples of best practice and innovation from other product and service providers in comparable regions.
There does seem to be a genuine appetite for this sort of service. Often at the Teagasc organic farm walks, you actually get other organic farmers and growers attending to brush up their skills and get a few tips. These walks essentially involve farmer-to-farmer skills sharing. Likewise, organisations such as the Western Organic Network offer farm-based training.
In other jurisdictions, the mentoring approach has become a ground-up alterative to state-related organic certification. The�Certified Naturally Grown� (CNG) scheme in the US has emerged as an alternative to the cost, paperwork and perception of watered down rules in �USDA organic�.
Farmers inspect, advise and mentor each other in the CNG system, a system with minimal bureaucracy. In Ireland, between farming and organic certification, Joe reckons he could be inspected up to 22 times a year � and then there�s the farming to be done. As they say in the States, go figure.
For more on CNG: www.naturallygrown.org
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