The best way to test your farm is through a third party. Many organic inspectors are qualified to take samples for testing. Some won't do it because they don't support testing while others support it but are prevented from doing it by certifiers.

If you can’t find an organic inspector who’s qualified and willing to test your farm, and if you’re not within a day’s drive from where we live, you’ll have to do what a lot of other good, honest, organic farmers already do all around the world: take your own samples.

Here’s how:

You probably already have maps of your farm. If not, draw some up; the more accurate the better.

Then you need to collect one “combined sample” from each of your cash crops.

• A combined sample consists of many small scoops of dirt (tablespoon sized) taken from the middle of a field, garden or pasture.
• Walk in a curve, not in a straight line, and collect scoops of dirt every twenty feet or so.
• Some labs will test plant tissue, but most prefer soil. Remember, everything applied to a crop ends up in the dirt, so soil samples are excellent indicators.
• Label your samples with the field number and your farm name. A combined sample does not need to be large; a small, sealable sandwich bag is plenty.

Once you have a combined sample from each crop, decide how many you want to have analyzed.

• We recommend just one test per farm per year, unless it’s an extremely large farm (greater than 100 acres for orchards and market gardens; greater than 2,000 acres for grain crops and pastures).
• Assuming you will only run one crop sample through the lab, you now need to randomly select which sample it will be.
• Get someone else to mix up the sample bags (make sure they’re all labeled) and you pick one with your eyes closed.

Now you have to decide what to test for.

• There are many prohibited herbicides, pesticides, synthetic fertilizers and fungicides that labs can detect.
• But as a start we recommend a basic herbicide screen test, also called a neutral herbicide test.
• This will test for herbicides in the phenoxy family, which includes 2-4D, MCPA and Dicamba.
• You could simply send your sample to me at the address below and I will get it tested for you. This adds credibility to this process because you don't know what I am testing for this year.

In all, you should be able to test for as many as 17 commonly-used phenoxy herbicides for no more than $300, a fraction of what you pay for bureaucratic certification. Most agriculture labs can do a phenoxy test, or they know a lab that can. If you send your sample to me I can get it tested for over 120 prohibited substances in different chemical families for $300.

• Now you split your randomly chosen sample in half.
• You keep half and send the other half to the lab.
• This way you still have a back-up sample if anything goes wrong.
• Now you wait for your results.
• Incidentally, if you send your sample to me the cost is often the same or less than what you'd pay to have the sample analysed yourself. This is becaus we run many samples through the lab every year and we get a bulk discount.

What about the other samples? You keep them.

You keep the half sample and all the other samples in a freezer until you get your results back from the lab. This is very important.

• If the lab finds the presence of a prohibited substances in your sample, you might want to run more soil from the same sample again to make sure the results are accurate.
• Or, you might want to run a sample from one of your adjacent fields to see if it also shows the presence of any prohibited substances.
• If no prohibited substances are found you may discard all the samples now that you have your results.
• If results are found, you might have a problem; at least now you can begin dealing with it.

These results represent your entire farm.

• Even though the sample is from a single field, it was randomly selected, and the results could’ve come from any of your cash crops.
• Next year you will repeat the process, and over your lifetime you will eventually have test results for every single field on your farm.
• There’s no hurry to achieve this; remember, the current system of organic certification doesn’t do any farm testing, so even after your first year you’ll be ahead of the bureaucratic certification industry.

Please note there are also many good things to test for, like increased microbiological activity in your soil. This is a vital component to a good organic management plan.

However, we recommend testing for what’s NOT supposed to be in your organic fields before you test for what IS supposed to be there. After all, it’s all about what the customer expects, and right now consumers are rightfully concerned with eliminating harmful toxins from their diets.

By randomly testing your farm you will be amongst the first in the world to provide consumers with a guarantee of the toxin-free organic status of your farm!

Good luck! And thanks for your support!!!

Don't forget to contact us with your results so we can post them on this site!