What is a Food System?
A food system includes all processes and infrastructure involved in feeding a population: growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consumption, and disposal of food and food-related items.
What is Certified Organic?
The USDA regulates use of the organic on labels. If you are not certified, you must not make any organic claim on the principal display panel or use the USDA organic seal anywhere on the package. You may only, on the information panel, identify the certified organic ingredients as organic and the percentage of organic ingredients.
What is Certified Naturally Grown?
Certified Naturally Grown is a third-party non-profit certification process for smaller-scale farmers that use organic practices but find the paperwork and costs associated with becoming Certified Organic prohibitive.
What is “All Natural”?
The U.S. Department of Agriculture considers a product “natural” when that product contains no artificial ingredient or added color and is only minimally processed. Minimal processing means that the product was processed in a way that does not fundamentally alter the product. The label must include a statement explaining the meaning of the term natural (such as “no artificial ingredients; minimally processed”).
What is Fair Trade?
Fair Trade is a movement that unites marginalized farmers and producers with traders and consumers in a commitment to fairness, equity, and environmental stewardship. Fair Trade Certification most directly applies to internationally traded commodities such as coffee, tea, chocolate, and sugar.
What is a GMO? (Genetically Modified Organism)
GMOs, or “genetically modified organisms,” are plants or animals created through the gene splicing techniques of biotechnology (also called genetic engineering, or GE). This experimental technology merges DNA from different species, creating unstable combinations of plant, animal, bacterial and viral genes that cannot occur in nature or in traditional crossbreeding. GMO free does not mean the product is free of pesticides or herbicides.
What are Growth Hormones?
Artificial growth hormones, such as Recombinant Bovine Somatotropin (rBST), are used to stimulate growth and milk production in food-producing animals. Questions and controversy over the impacts of these added hormones on human development and health continue.
What is Cage-Free / Free-Range / Pasture-Raised?
Cage-Free means that the fowl are not kept in battery cages; Free-Range means that the fowl had access to the outdoors; Pasture-Raised means that the fowl had ample space and time to roam outdoors.
What is Hybrid, Open Pollinated, & Heirloom?
Hybrids are created by crossing two separate varieties to achieve desirable characteristics. In general, hybrids may offer some combination of these favorable traits: faster growth, less care, higher yield, better flavor, and/or better disease resistance. If you sow the seeds of a hybrid, the resulting fruit may revert to the characteristics of one of its parents. Pluots, plumcots, tangelos, and other fruit crosses are hybrids.
Open pollinated varieties are plants that are pollinated naturally by the wind or insects without human intervention.
Heirloom plants are open pollinated varieties that are at least 50 years old having been passed down for generations. Their characteristics tend to remain constant from one year to the next.
