Eight things worth money: the research nobody is paying to do, food for households where price is the barrier, farms crossing the three-year conversion valley, the regional networks that stop producers giving up in year two, seed and soil, paid apprenticeships, getting new growers onto land, and keeping every listing on this map free.
There is no payment button on this page because there is no payment system behind it. Taking card details before the plumbing exists is how money goes missing, and a charity that cannot yet account for a dollar should not be collecting one.
The funds are described here so you can see what we intend to do with the money before we ask for any. If you want to be told when giving opens, write to hello@organicmatters.nz.
Funding the questions nobody is paying to ask about lower-input farming.
Long-term comparisons of farming systems, plant breeding for organic conditions, non-chemical weed control, biological pest management, and the soil, water and biodiversity outcomes of each. Funded on the condition that researchers report what they find, including results that go against us. Funding buys the opportunity to ask a question; it never buys the answer.
Subsidised organic boxes for households where price is the barrier.
Grants and mentoring to get farms through the three-year transition.
Field days, open-farm trails, shared certification and mentoring.
Seed sovereignty, seed libraries and affordable soil testing.
Hosting and the annual certificate verification.
Paid places on organic apprenticeships and cadetships, so learning to grow is not unpaid labour.
The average age of New Zealand primary producers keeps climbing, and the usual route in — work for nothing on somebody's farm and hope — excludes anybody who cannot afford to. This funds the wage, so a two-year apprenticeship in market gardening, cheesemaking or orcharding is a job rather than a favour.
Not buying farms. Underwriting leases, incubator blocks and the legal cost of land trusts.
Land is the hardest problem on this list and the one donations help least directly: nobody is buying a $600,000 horticulture block with koha. What money can do is narrower and real — underwrite a lease so a landowner will take a chance on a new grower, pay the legal costs of setting up a community land trust, or fund an incubator block where somebody can farm for three years without buying anything. Said plainly here because a fund that implied it could buy land would be raising money against a promise it cannot keep.
Intended proportions, not audited accounts — nothing has been given yet, so there is nothing to audit. When there is, this section becomes a real set of numbers with a year attached.