Today’s organic farmers, like all farmers, are consummate problem solvers and masters of many skills. However, reliable assistance and educational tools to successfully deal with the daily challenges of their operations are often lacking.

I am asked with some regularity about whether e-commerce will obliterate the grocery store as we know it. I wouldn’t bet on it. It is true that food retailers have not (yet) seen the same kind of disruption owing to convenience seeking and showrooming behaviors that other types of merchants face. Meal kit services have made a big splash and gotten more folks cooking, but I wonder if people keep the training wheels on once they become comfortable in the kitchen.

Two individuals and a farming couple receiving Organic Leadership Awards from the Organic Trade Association in September have the drive to make a difference, a strong belief that organic practices are the way to go, and a commitment to mentoring others.

Some 200 organic stakeholders gathered this spring in Washington, D.C., for the Organic Trade Association’s 2018 Policy Conference to talk about the future of organic, and their roles in that future. Meeting in the historic National Press Building where for almost 100 years journalists have heard from American presidents and lawmakers, foreign heads of state, business titans and international celebrities, the organic advocates had a lot on their minds.

Successful farming requires careful planning and the right tools. A new crop budgeting tool developed by the U.S. Organic Grain Collaboration enables organic farmers—and those producers interested in transitioning to organic—to zero in on their specific operations and provides a new resource to help improve their current organic operation or to make the choice to go organic.

Millennials. The term has recently come under scrutiny for being overused at best and pejorative at worst. We’ve blamed this demographic for a variety of societal and economic ills, the conditions for most of which were set decades before their birth.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Millennials are the largest population group. Born between 1981 and 1997, they number 75.4 million, and have recently surpassed Baby Boomers as the largest group of voting-age American adults.