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Empowering Sustainable Farming with the Certified Naturally Grown Label with Alice Varon
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How do you assure customers that the food you are selling is healthy, safe, and nutritious?
The organic label has long been a hallmark of the GOOD FOOD industry, but it can sometimes be difficult to source every ingredient from organic farmers, which keeps your brand from sporting that highly-regulated logo.
Certified Naturally Grown (CNG) may be an answer to the issue of mindful ingredient sourcing. CNG offers peer-review certification to farmers producing food for their local communities through natural ways and without relying on synthetic chemicals or GMOs.
In this conversation, we are visited by Alice Varon, Executive Director of Certified Naturally Grown, to share us with the CNG label, the organization and what they do, their mission is, and how they support farmers to do what’s best—sustainable agriculture.
Virginia Foodie Essentials:
- [Certified Naturally Grown] is an assurance that the food was grown without any synthetic chemicals or GMOs, with attention to soil and ecological balance. - Alice Varon
- The cool thing about our certification program is the participation in the program involved. More than just getting the label, you actually have to be engaged and agree to conduct an onsite peer review. - Alice Varon
- Most of the farmers who join Certified Naturally Grown are joining because this is how they farm. It reflects their values. They're committed to working in harmony with nature, and they want to get some credit for that beyond just saying, so they want a certification to verify that this is how they farm. - Alice Varon
- It's a big leap not just financially to become “certified organic,” but it's a knowledge-intensive occupation to farm this way, and so conventional farmers really need support in making that transition as well. - Alice Varon
Key Points From This Episode:
- Certified Naturally Grown is a badge in the marketplace that assures the food was grown without any synthetic chemicals or GMOs, with attention to soil and ecological balance.
- Certified Naturally Grown takes pride in its high standard of certification as it attracts farmers who have high standards for themselves and involve them in peer-reviewing the ways and means of other participating farmers.
- Certified Naturally Grown is a label different from Organic. While CNG also follows the USDA standards, its certification model is tailored for direct market farmers who are growing food for their local and regional communities.
- Their certification model relies on peer review inspections that are carried out by participating farmers, which allows them to connect with one another, share their knowledge, grow, and learn from the experience of having that peer review inspection.
- There are standards and criteria set for the peer review and it leans in on transparency by posting inspection reports on the website.
- The transition from conventional farming to organic is a difficult thing to do, so farmers who would want to go through that transition should be supported.
- The CNF certification also fits other business models.
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