Many organic growers are curious about the certifications our products receive, and in particular, whether they are OMRI-certified.
In short: most of our products* are compliant with the USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP), but we have chosen not to pursue OMRI certification.
There’s a good reason for that. Curious why? Read on.
Our products must get state-level organic approval from the departments of agriculture in all 50 states.
The departments of ag in California (CDFA) and Washington (WSDA) are the big dogs in that world—they set stringent standards, and have the resources to back up the approval process. If California says something is organic, every other state (except Washington) goes along with it. The same goes for Washington—every other state (except California) will defer to their judgment. But OMRI doesn’t matter to those states: they will still do their own reviews, which will still take the same amount of time, regardless whether or not something is OMRI certified.
Now, CDFA and WSDA are legit. If they say something is organic, you can be certain it’s watertight. Trust us: we’ve registered dozens of products with them: submitting lists of components, recipes, sub-components, safety data sheets; and having countless back-and-forth conversations with the regulators.
We believe that those states provide the best organic standard we can be held to.
We could seek OMRI verification in addition, but it would just be a nice logo with no additional benefits. It would however be quite expensive and result in higher prices for our customers, without giving them any additional assurances beyond what the states give.
Aye, there’s the rub.
*We sell 4 products that are not NOP-compliant; this is intentional to keep prices lower for our conventional growers. Each has an easy substitute that is NOP-approved:
- SeaGuard™ (a non-organic version of SeaShield™)
- CalGuard™ (organic growers can use HoloCal™ for organic liquid calcium)
- Micro5000™ and PZ 1000™ (Micro 5000 Organic™ can substitute for both).
