Smit Orchards is one of those vendors. The Central California-based farm’s apples and cherries come certified by California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF), the leading trade and certification organization in the country. According to Mat, who works the register at the Smit Orchards stall, that proof of certification makes a world of difference for customers – and in turn, makes a difference for vendors and producers. It’s a trend that has been growing strongly over the past few years, no doubt spurred on by a rising concern among the general public over food safety standards.  

“People want to know what’s in their food,” concurs Jane Wade, Development Specialist at CCOF. “Organic Certification is the only food system that actually has standards, regulations, requirements, and organizations like the CCOF that ensure you’re meeting those standards and requirements.” In short, Organic Certification is a simple way of providing consumers with an awful lot of information about what they’re buying.

That is not to say that obtaining organic certification is simple. To the contrary, organic certification is a rigorous process filled with strict guidelines meant to bring farms up to code with organic standards dictated by the USDA.

“There are different requirements depending on what you’re doing,” says Wade. “If you’re growing on the ground, your soil has to be without prohibited materials for at least three years. You must be planting organic seeds or starts, and you must be using organic growing methods – that means crop rotation, maintaining the fertility of the soil, and not using synthetic fertilizers or pesticides. The main idea is to keep the poison out of the food, and at the same time to maintain the strength of the growing system by maintaining soil fertility.”

Those three years are not years that go unchecked: farms are expected to draft an Organic System Plan and keep extensive harvesting and planting logs, keeping track of everything from schedules to any time fertilizers or other inputs (USDA organic standards-approved, naturally) are used. The rules can even extend to physical restrictions like how many feet away a farm’s crops are from a neighboring farm using conventional methods – and farms are also subject to frequent visits from inspectors to make sure that everything is up to snuff. If an error is made or evidence of unapproved chemicals is uncovered, farms are sent back to square one to restart the three-year process.

Then there is the cost. When done through the CCOP, the certification process starts with an initial $275 application fee. After that, each inspection can run several hundred dollars. Once a farm passes muster and is officially certified, it is subject to yearly fees that can run into thousands according to the CCOP’s Gross Organic Production Value table. “People always want to know why organic fruit costs more,” remarks Audrey, who works at the Smit Orchards stall alongside Mat. “It doesn’t cost more to grow organic fruit – it’s because of getting them Certified Organic.”

It’s a process that can be frustrating to farmers who use organic methods but aren’t as interested in the costly financial barriers and red tape standing between their crops and organic certification, or others who have been derailed from the three-year organic plan by persistent pests or other complications. It has led some to begin searching for an alternative to official organic certification through labels like “sustainable.”

“’Sustainability’ is where you grow organically but you don’t pay the certification fee to be certified organic,” notes Mat. “Then it leaves you that window where you can spray to get rid of pests or whatever is going to ruin your crop as a last resort kind of deal. That’s a new term that they’re trying to get passed – it’s like a new style of growing.”

But Wade points out that, by definition, such terms lack the kind of concrete information that a Certified Organic seal of approval provides. “You can label a product as ‘natural’ or ‘sustainable,’ but that only means what you say it means,” she notes. “When you have to have your product certified in order to label it ‘organic,’ you are saying that it meets very specific requirements and standards and regulations and that there’s someone backing that up. Your certifier, whose name is also on your label, is backing up that you’re meeting those requirements and that you continue to meet them over time.”

And ultimately, providing that customer satisfaction is precisely why so much of the farmers' market crew ends up making the effort necessary to certify their products. “I think legitimacy is the main thing,” says Mat. “It’s kind of interesting. People want that little sticker.”

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Interested in having your own products certified organic? Visit CCOF.org for more information on how to start the process. 

SELL

Whether you produce potatoes or homemade peanut butter – if you have something to sell, you can sell it at a farmers’ market. Even restaurants can get in on the action by setting up a stall and whipping up your signature dishes. (A crepe shop that sets up shop at San Diego’s Little Italy Mercato frequently enjoys lines halfway down the block.)

How you can get started selling at a farmers’ market depends on your region, but most are somewhat similar in terms of general guidelines. As the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR) tells those curious individuals, start with the basics: “Get a copy of the market rules from the market manager.” If you’re lucky, the farmers’ market you’re looking to sell your wares at will host rules and regulations on its website like Bay Area’s California Farmers’ Market Association. But otherwise, get in contact with your local market manager.

You’ll likely be required to supply a fee (think of it like rent on your booth space) and the appropriate equipment to run your stand – a display stand if one isn’t provided, a cash box, a banner, and a scale for weighing and pricing your product if you’re selling by the pound. You may also need a Certified Producers’ Certificate to prove your authority to sell at a legitimate Certified Farmers’ Market, and if you’re producing a product like jams or baked goods you may be required to conduct your prep work in an industrial kitchen. But as long as you’re aware and in compliance with regulations, you should be well on your way to a farmers’ market stand of your own.

VOLUNTEER

Farmers’ markets may be de rigueur right now, but even at the height of their trendiness many tend to rely on the kindness of volunteers to take an interest in the cause. A farmers’ market volunteer might be tasked with manning the information booth, collecting e-mail addresses for newsletters, or other small tasks throughout the duration of the event. You may even get payment in the form of market vouchers for the hours of time and energy you’ve contributed, and still another upside is building rapport with the vendors who are out there every week and learning your way around the best booths at the market.  

Much like vending, volunteering starts with contacting your local market’s manager. If your market has a website, check out the appropriate contacts and shoot them a line asking how you can help. If not, try the information booth next time you’re there. Someone will surely be glad you asked.

RALLY

What if you don’t have a farmers’ market in your town? You may not be able to build yourself a grocery store, but with enough determination and activism you can bring a farmers’ market to fruition. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that over a thousand new farmers’ market locations have opened across the country in the last year alone.

There’s no question: it’s a lot of work, requiring research into everything from community demand and how many vendors take interest to zoning restrictions and accessibility issues. MDAR also has a great resource site for starting a farmers’ market in your area that is well worth a read wherever you are. 

RESOURCES FOR FURTHER READING

Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources – A great source for farmers, farmers’ market managers, and consumers with information on shopping, vending, and producing a farmers’ market. Valuable information even for non-residents of Massachusetts.

Organic Authority – A more simplified list of steps to take when planning a farmers’ market, and a good jumping-off point.

California Farmers’ Market Association – The website for a Bay Area collective of farmers’ markets, this has a comprehensive list of rules and guidelines posted online that can give anyone a general idea of what to expect when attempting to open a vending stall at a market. 

Tim Mather and Greg Avola, the app’s co-founders, had been playing around with the concept of a Foursquare-like social media application for a while before hitting on the right subject. “There had been some other ones in the space that talked about checking in to movies or television shows,” says Avola, the New York-based half of the team. “But nothing around beer – which is a social activity to begin with, but was never really put on a pedestal on the web like that.”

Everything fell into place after that. Mather and Avola had developed a prototype, and launched a web-based beta version in September of 2010. By the end of October 2011 the team had publicly launched Untappd in its full glory, complete with native apps for iPhone and Android and catchy new features – many of them user-requested – like the ability to rate a beer or “toast” the selections of your friends (“similar to a ‘like’ on Facebook”). By now, the app can boast over 100,000 users and is approaching four million check-ins.

“We were just kind of playing around with it,” says Avola. “We didn’t think it would come to much, to be honest with you. But it really has exploded over the past couple months, and it’s definitely been real exciting to watch.”

So far Mather and Avola, along with product manager John Vajda, have put emphasis on the consumer experience end of the product – but the next step for Untappd is bringing breweries themselves into the fold by allowing them to “claim” their beers, another move similar to restaurants taking charge of their own properties on Foursquare. This new feature is designed to have some major benefits for breweries interested in boosting their social media outreach. As outfits like Brooklyn Brewery (among the first to partner up) display, breweries will be able to claim their own domain name and take control of their portfolio with proper spellings, labels and descriptions, making it easier for fans to find and connect with them.

Another benefit, which the Untappd team considers especially significant, is that the new features will allow breweries to extract more valuable real-time insights from the data that’s constantly being generated by check-ins, like where and when beers are being consumed.

“It kind of brings it all full circle,” says Avola. “Right now, a lot of times breweries tend to communicate with people outside of Untappd; we’d like to bring that kind of communication within the platform. We think it’s going to be a major thing. Being able to have real-time insight into how your brewery’s doing with real-time stats is something that hasn’t been done before in this kind of industry.”

Untappd already has a lot going on, and there’s a lot to look forward to in the near future, but Avola acknowledges that his team’s work on perfecting their product is far from done. That’s probably because, much like brewmasters and their beers, the Untappd team is an unabashed fan of its own product. “A lot of people build applications, but they don’t use them,” he points out. “We’re users, and also the builders. So we want to make sure that it’s good enough for everyone, and that it’s good enough for us. We want to continually keep building it to make sure it meets the needs of the consumers.”

“It’s been a fun ride so far,” he adds. When it comes to beer and being social, that’s exactly as it should be.