We are a group of students from South Korea and funded by one of major companies, LG. This program financially supports students who are willing to find our insightful ideas from other countries.

We choose our topic as ‘To find a way to boost unsystematic Korean GAP (Good Agricultural Practices) from the improved GAP in the United States‘. In South Korea, we don’t really have the systematic the GAP system. In this regard, we find a great example from the GAP in the United States that is keeping up with various demands of people.

However, it is hard to find way kind of information regarding the improved GAP system on the internet. Therefore, could you let us know if it is available for us to visit your center? We are going to leave for the United States in July or August, 2009. We are 4 people (2 male, 2 female).

Unfortunately, if it is not available to allow us to visit you, could you recommend people who have knowledge related to the topic?

We are looking forward to hearing you as soon as possible.

Best wishes

CHANGOO JO from Gyeongsang National University in South Korea

The place where I am now serves a very small local population — CSA, farm stand, farmers’ market and one restaurant. I can only imagine how much more complicated it gets when you start scaling up and dealing with new kinds of distribution.

I know this is stating the obvious, but we need to formally declare the existence of at least two viable food systems. Perhaps current regulations will remain appropriate for industrial agriculture, but they would be rewritten or abandoned for small, sustainable (and/or organic) farms.

Is such a system realistic? I hope so.

I’ve been on small farms that are poorly managed that you could not pay me to eat anything from, and I’ve been on large farms that are well managed and I would gladly eat or drink anything raised on that farm. So it disturbs me to read that small farms should be protected or exempted from farm and food safety regulations (which I wholeheartedly agree are usually unreasonable) simply because of their size.

It’s like the horse owner who thinks manure from a single horse doesn’t have the capacity to pollute like manure from a 50-cow dairy (dairies manage their manure much more soundly than most horse farms).

I certainly hear and understand and agree somewhat with what you’re saying: Every regulation will have unintended consequences. But it’s all about management, not size.

Despite the poorly written and ill-conceived regulation that are coming out at the (usually) federal level, there are some bright spots in food safety. On example with which I’m familiar is the Washington State Department of Agriculture who, from the ground up, are coming up with some very sane regulations that both ensure safety more effectively (in my opinion) and are more small-farm-friendly than the cumbersome and prescriptive regulations that we love to complain about.

For example, at a Tilth Producers conference a couple of years ago I attended a session on small dairy certification hosted by a farmer and a representative of the WSDA. The farmer indicated that one of the challenges of certification in Washington is that the regulations specify *results*, not methods. It’s left to the farmer to figure out how to meet sanitation goals, not how to pay for the specified equipment. As an eater, I don’t care how far the domestic animals are from my greens, I care that the result of the handling is food free of contamination. A small farmer can spare the attention to detail to manage handling as intensively as a small farmer must manage production.

An example of WSDA’s sane approach to regulation is that, when a farmer found the requirement for a commercial dishwasher too onerous, he was able to demonstrate to the local inspector that a consumer model dishwasher offered the same results as the commercial dishwasher at a fraction of the cost. Thus, the inspector was (rightly) satisfied, the farmer was able to produce dairy at the appropriate scale, and the consumer was assured of a clean and wholesome product thanks to the active, critical, and results-oriented involvement of the agency as well as the diligence of the farmer in researching the problem instead of being forced to focus on regulations.

If more rules and regulations are spun from clouds by lobbyist, large corporations, and those supposedly in power to protect us from the very health concerns they say might harm us, we will forever be in danger of eating poison.

Shop smart.
Eat local.