The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently reacted to prohibited practices at one organic farm collective by banning all together a system that let collectives gain certification by having a random sample of the member farms inspected, Salon has reported.

Inspectors under ideal circumstances can inspect four or five farms a day, and it currently takes about 20 to 30 days at $150–270 per day to certify a grower group. Under the new rules, these farmers who are supposed to benefit from their collective organization will all have to be certified individually in order to use the "organic" label in the United States. For some, this means they're getting screwed in new and original ways!

[C]onsider the case of one co-op of Peruvian banana farmers, for whom the USDA ruling is especially ironic: The 1,500 growers formerly worked as tenants on a single plantation, but with agrarian reforms in the 1960s each family got a plot of the landlord's land. Had that plantation been maintained, it could have had one visit a year from an inspector. But because the property is now split among 1,500 families, inspectors will need to visit each farm on the land.

Let's hope a better policy can be developed.

Right now, University of Michigan students are staging a sit-in to end the use of sweatshop labor for university licensed apparel.  The students are demanding that the administration accept a Designated Suppliers Program and Code of Conduct for its licensees, that will actually reward factories for adopting fair and humane labor standards for its workers—thus reversing the “race to the bottom” trend, into a “race to the top.”  The best part of this plan, developed largely by United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), is that the Workers’ Rights Consortium, in cooperation with the local union or union-like entity, monitors and evaluates their places of employment for compliance with the Code of Conduct.  Workers can request that the factory be taken off the list of Code-compliant factories if violations occur.

Call, e-mail or fax the University of Michigan president, Mary Sue Coleman, now!  Tell her that you support the students sitting in and want the University of Michigan to be an example to other schools committed to the dignity of workers everywhere.  College apparel is a multi-billion dollar industry, and this plan has the potential to make real change.