“Organic” is a word that the government stole from us. They stole it from the people who spent decades laboring in trial-and-error experimentation and open exchange of hard-fought wisdom to re-learn how to grow food in harmony with our biosphere.

We can no longer use the word “organic” in this country without paying tribute to the USDA’s Organikburo. Too many small-scale farmers are thus left out of a system that favors giant agribusiness and monocropping. Yet the principles behind the organic movement are as important as ever as a means to restore sanity and balance to the way in which we grow, distribute, sell and consume our food.

This is why we created ORGANIC MEANS ORGANIC: to work toward the preservation of the ethic of organics and promote its holistic principles, while the label gets bastardized and cheapened. We are working toward defining this ethic under a concept we call RADICAL SUSTAINABILITY –in a nutshell, that no aspect of our food’s socio-ecological footprint can be looked at in isolation. Yes, we need more organic farmers, but even more so we also need organic distributors and wholesalers, organic retailers and organic consumers.

We have found that the greatest need for this holistic concept is in the coffee industry, where the realities of geopolitics and social geography dictate that the entire world’s crop is grown by people in developing nations –there is no “locally grown” coffee movement in the US or Canada. Furthermore, the multi-dimensional aspects of sustainable agriculture in the coffee world are fragmented into multiple simplistic labels that signify marketing choices & ability to pay for certification rather than acting as a useful tool of communication with consumers. These elements need to be reunited under a communicative banner that represents the ETHIC OF SUSTAINABILITY, not a new label.

To aid in this effort, we are forming an information-exchange cooperative called the Radically Sustainable Coffeeworkers Alliance (RaSCAl) of GAIA. This forum is its genesis, and we hope to expand it to other cyber-locations in the future.

Membership, of course, is completely free and is open to anyone who is interested in furthering the growth and consumption of sustainably-grown coffee in our society. This would include:

--coffee farmers and production workers
--roasters and wholesalers
--coffeehouse owners and operators
--baristas and other employees
--owner/members and employees of natural foods cooperatives and markets that sell and brew coffee
--loyal patrons and fans of all the above

This will be a place for respectful exchange between human beings, ie. no subjective bashing of other coffee-related organizations or products; no bots and no “corporate personhoods.” We welcome any individual who wants to tout the sustainability profile of his/her favorite corporate coffee chain –in fact, the more the merrier—but we ask that you bring fact-based information to the table, not vague PR statements. Likewise, anyone is welcome to point out the insufficiency of another organization’s commitment to sustainable business, but you will be asked to use objective & verifiable facts as the basis for your point.
No amount of deviation from these standards will be tolerated. Any post that pushes these buttons will be removed, and we will issue a written warning to the guilty party. Any repeat offense will result in a general plebiscite in the form a post that will ask for someone to explain why you should not be banned. Lack of three or more separate testimonials within a reasonable amount of time (at our discretion) will result in banishment. But we don’t wanna do that, so let’s play nice.

For more information about radical sustainability or the group sponsoring this forum, please visit our website at:

www.omeanso.org


To visit our directory of Organic/Fair Trade Coffee Spots in the US and Canada:

www.omeanso.org/ogftcoffee

Thanks so much for your interest in this topic! We hope to hear from you soon….

Namaste, from your friends at ORGANIC MEANS ORGANIC