What is Organic?

I am reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.  Anyone else read it?  It is a nicely succinct overview of our national food system, how farmers Got Big, how that is not good, and the implied meanings of the word organic.
Although the word organic has two very specific definitions (one by the dictionary, one by the USDA—read below), it implies much more.  Organic agriculture at its best implies “small farming” and “local” and “energy-efficient” and “nutritious” and “sustainable.”   In other words, Quality over Quantity.  Below is something I wrote up last year:


What is this mysterious word “organic?”
Organic in the dictionary means a lot of different things:

• Chemically, it is of or designating carbon compounds.
•  It is of or relating to or derived from living organisms.  
• Relating to, yielding, dealing in, or involving the use of food produced with the use of fertilizer of plant or animal origin without employment of chemically formulated fertilizers or pesticides. Whew!

Some may say organic is natural.  But that is another label.
In the United States if a farm claims that they are organic, then they are either very small and are not making much money, OR they have undergone third-party organic certification and have filed this with the USDA.  To qualify for the organic label, the farm must prove with documentation that the land and inputs to the soil have been free of synthetic chemicals for at least three years.  The actual vegetables cannot be sprayed with pesticides created in a lab.  Everything has to be of or relating to something alive.
Peasants’ Plot is hoping to begin the certification process once we have accumulated the three years worth of paperwork necessary and once we have the capital to spare.  It can be a relatively expensive endeavor. 
Be assured for now that we are farming with methods in accordance with organic certifying agencies.  We care about the health of our soil and our customers in all ways “organic.”