1010: Certified Naturally Grown: Building Community, Trust, and a Better Food System

with Jennifer Miller & Erin Torgerson

In this Episode - What if small farmers could build trust with their customers without taking on the cost and paperwork of USDA Organic certification? That’s the idea behind Certified Naturally Grown (CNG), a grassroots organization helping farmers show customers how they grow their food. In this episode, Greg Peterson sits down with Jennifer Miller and Erin Torgerson from CNG to talk about how peer inspections, transparency, and a strong farming community help make that possible. Along the way, they explore the importance of local food, saving seeds, sharing knowledge, and making good food more accessible to everyone.

Our Guests: Jennifer is the interim executive director of Certified Naturally Grown. From working on farms around the world to running her own farm and directing two food hubs, Jennifer's hands-on experience proves one thing, food is her love language.

Erin is the communications and certification coordinator of Certified Naturally Grown. While filming a student documentary about a local farm-to-table restaurant, Erin caught her first glimpse of a biodiverse small-scale farm and hasn't looked back.

Certified Naturally Grown is an organization that offers peer review certification to farmers and beekeepers producing food, flowers, and fiber for their local communities by working in harmony with nature without relying on synthetic chemicals or GMOs.

Key Topics

• Certified Naturally Grown (CNG): A farmer-led certification program built around trust, transparency, and community.
• CNG and USDA Organic: How CNG offers an alternative for farmers who find USDA Organic certification too expensive or complicated.
• Peer inspections: Farmers visit and review one another’s operations, creating opportunities to learn as well as verify growing practices.
• Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS): A community-based approach to building confidence in how food is produced.
• Making farming work financially: The challenges small-scale farmers face when balancing good growing practices with the realities of running a business.
• Five CNG certification programs: Produce and flowers, livestock, apiaries, mushrooms, and aquaponics.
• Transparency for consumers: How customers can learn more about participating farms and review inspection information.
• Local food systems: Why connecting farmers, consumers, and communities matters.
• Food hubs and distribution: The challenges of getting locally grown food to the people who want it.
• Natural beekeeping: Approaches to raising bees with attention to their health and well-being.
• Aquaponics: Growing food through a system that combines fish and plants.
• Seed saving: Preserving seed varieties and helping farmers maintain greater control over their growing systems.
• Farmer education and mentorship: How sharing experience can help new and established growers succeed.
• Understanding the food system: Why building a better food future involves more than just how we grow food.

Key Questions Answered

Why was Certified Naturally Grown created?

CNG was developed to help smaller farmers demonstrate their growing practices and build customer confidence without the expense and administrative burden that can come with USDA Organic certification.

How is CNG different from USDA Organic?

CNG uses standards based on the USDA National Organic Program, but it operates as a separate, community-based certification program. It is not the same as USDA Organic certification.

How does the certification process work?

Farmers apply to