ORGANIC RESOURCES



NRAES (Natural Resourcs, Agriculture, and Engineering Service) is offering Crop Rotation on Organic Farms: A Planning Manual in July 2009, with pre-order available until June 15. Visit http://www.nraes.org/nra_crof.html for details.

The MSU Cooperative Extension Service website is a new resource that is dedicated to organic agriculture. The information is credible and comprehensive, and an added feature allows someone to pose questions to the experts. Anyone wanting to use it for organic purposes just needs to click on “Organic Agriculture” on the sidebar called “Resource Areas.”

Montana State Department of Agriculture Organic Program: http://agr.mt.gov/organic/Program.asp

Organic Trade Association's HowToGoOrganic.com: http://howtogoorganic.com/

ATTRA - National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service: http://attra.ncat.org/

The process of organic certification can be challenging; however, there are plenty of valuable resources available. For more information on the certification process, contact any of the organizations listed below:

• USDA National Organic Program (NOP) www.ams.usda.gov/nop. Regulations for U.S. organic farms and businesses, The National Organic Program list, and the complete USDA guidelines for certified organic food.
• A USDA site that offers fact sheets on all aspects and types of organic farming and marketing relevant in the U.S. including farm plan templates is www.attra.org. Two valuable publications include The Organic Certification Process and Preparing for an Organic Inspection: Steps and Checklists.
• Organic Material Review Institute (OMRI, www.omri.org), has a searchable site of products allowed in organic production such as sprays and soil amendments. Always get the approval from your certifying agency before using any new product even when it is listed by OMRI.
• Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Services (MOSES, www.mosesorganic.org) offers valuable publications and technical resources and a calendar of events pertaining to organic agriculture.
• New Farm, www.newfarm.org, is an online magazine produced by Rodale Institute offering farm related information that can help you identify organic farm practices and ideas how to grow quality organic produce and crops. This site also offers comparison of the various organic certifying agencies. The Rodale Institute will also be introducing an online course to help farmers with the transition to organic and information will likely be available on the Web site.
• The Organic Trade Association (OTA) has provided a Web site to assist farmers with organic transition, www.howtogoorganic.com.

Organic Roots is an electronic collection of historic United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) publications related to organic agriculture. The collection contains more than 800 documents published before 1942 (before synthetic chemicals became widely used) that contain state-of-the-art information and data that is still very pertinent for today's agriculture. Access to this data is intended to provide growers with new ideas on crop production without chemicals, as well as help researchers conserve scarce resources by avoiding unintended duplication.

History of Organic Farming is a Weston A. Price Foundation for Wise Traditions article that explains the contributions from early researchers, some outside of the USA, and has some thoughtful commentary on the polarization between organic and nonorganic farming, land grant universities, and the fertilizer industry.