The USDA’s National Organic Program includes farming cooperatives, made up of hundreds and sometimes thousands of small family farms, in its organic certification process by randomly inspecting 20% of each cooperative’s farms every year. By the end of a five year cycle every farm would be inspected and a liaison appointed to monitor the 80% of farms that would not be inspected every year. This provision for “grower groups” allowed small farms in the poorer rural areas of poor nations to take part in the booming organics industry by making time consuming and costly inspections feasible for the cooperatives.

A recent ruling by the NOP that requires all farms to be inspected every year will likely make inspections impossible for these small farm cooperatives. Inspections range from $150 to $270 per day for the co-ops and the time required to inspect every farm will rise by about 80%. The only farms likely to be able to afford to pay for inspections under the new ruling are large corporate farms.

This will affect coffee more than any other popular organic product. Coffee grows on shady mountain slopes and requires time consuming labor to maintain and harvest. The intensive process is most efficiently carried out by small family farms and very few large organic coffee operations exist, probably not enough to fill the rapidly growing demand in the US.

The ruling was made in reaction to an unnamed Mexican cooperative whose liaison failed to enforce the organic standards and let the use of insecticides and crop storage in fertilizer bags occur on one of its partner farms. While tightening enforcement of the organic standard is not inherently a bad idea its consequences could be grave for the small farmer.