Organic Mentorship Program Now Being Offered

Oregon Tilth is organizing a mentorship program for organic growers throughout the Northwest designed to provide new and transitioning organic growers some guidance.

Drew Katz said their staff has many strengths, but most are not farmers.

“There’s a lot of value that farmers can provide others that are transitioning to organic that we can’t necessarily provide, so we want to create a peer learning opportunity for growers interested in organic.”

The program won’t start until later next year, but they are taking applications for up to 10 mentor-mentee pairings.

Katz said if you want to be a mentor, they are looking for someone who has grown organic at least five years, who is passionate about growing organic production and a wide range of folks with different expertise.

“A lot of them see a lot of unmet opportunities for organic crops. They’d like to see the domestic market grow for organics. Currently there’s a lot of imports of certain commodity crops that are organic and coming into the U.S. I think a lot of the existing organic growers would really like to see a growth in domestic organic production.”

You can find out more, and get an application, at Oregon Tilth's website.

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