Our top story, the San Diego-based Qureshi company has announced a change that may significantly expand the number of farms throughout the area. Joining me is the CEO at Kashii which is owned by Kellogg. Kashii has been trying to use products from certified organic farms . What is transitional certification? The Kashii team is using its mindset to help make organics accessible to more people. Certified transitional is a third-party certified protocol, that recognizes and rewards farmers following the same practices as USDA certified organic. They are in a three-year transitional period to certified organic farming. Take us through the process. A lot of people don't know, it takes three years to transition from conventional farming to organic. After those three years, you still need to apply to the USDA to achieve certification. It's important to point out, during those years the farm must follow the protocols consistent with USDA organic practices. The farms that have been through this rigorous USDA certification have less chance of producing products that have pesticide residue. Do you believe transitional certified products are just as good? Yes. We recognize that there's protocol that needs to be followed. Transitional farmers follow that protocol. Organic farming using time-honored practices that replenish the soil and protect the land. Less than 1% of US farmland is organic. Why is it only 1%? Farmers face challenges converting from conventional farming to organic. Those challenges could involve new infrastructure, dedicated organic silos, developing new farm management plans, arranging new loans, new financing and then market risk. That period of transition, they are not getting paid the price, for the previous or product that they would get paid they were certain type organic five USDA. We are taking an open source model, we are observing is that many companies that find their own organic times. That is the sample of vertical integration. How it works in business, you vertically integrate when there's market failure. The Kashii company , has produced and worked hard on certified transitional, we want to make organic food accessible to more people. We want to take an open source model. It's not just grains or food, it can go into other categories, cotton and fashion, etc. to help farmers convert from conventional farming to USDA organic. What kind of effect you think this certification might have on food prices? There are a lot of forces at work when it comes to food prices. We think supply and demand is a big factor. Will they go down, if the certified transitional catches on? It's always demand and supply. What we've identified is less than 1% of US farmland is organic. This effort should increase, through an open-source approach. Convert to US DA organic. If I could highlight a story, we were visiting a farmer in the Midwest is organic farmer. She was talking to our team about some of the difficulties. She said she was organic and getting organic prices now, I would much prefer to support farmers transitioning, it is a challenging period. That's when we had our lightbulb moment around certified transition. The Kashii brand has critics. Do you think using product's with this new designation will satisfy those critics? 100% of the products we are manufacturing are non-GML -- GM oh. When it comes to USDA organic, we were one of the first companies in 2002, to achieve USDA certification for a serial. Over that time we've increased the proportion of organic foods in our portfolio. Now over one third of our portfolio is organic and we are increasing that overtime. I've been speaking with David Denham, CEO of Kashii on a new experiment that the company is training -- trying.
San Diego-based cereal-maker Kashi on Tuesday announced efforts to recognize crops grown on farms that are in the process of switching to organic.
The Kellogg's company teamed up with organic certifier Quality Assurance International for Certified Transitional, a new protocol to acknowledge farmers' efforts to move from conventionally grown crops, which typically use pesticides, to organic crops, which do not.
“Transitioning to organic isn’t easy," said Brad Hennrich, president of specialty grain company Hesco/Dakota Organic Products, in a statement. "Farmers must invest in new infrastructure, create new business plans, and even obtain new crop insurance and financing. That all starts day one when they begin converting to organic, but they don’t see the financial benefit of organic prices for three years.”
David Denholm, CEO of Kashi, discusses the plan on KPBS Midday Edition Tuesday.
