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Business Detailed:
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Vegetables (including 100 varieties of heirloom tomatoes), culinary herbs, vegetable bedding plants.
�Certified by Organic Crop Improvement Association (O
Text from Moffa.org
PDF available at:
http://www.moffa.org/f/Getting_to_Organic_2008.pdf
The Cinzoris had been raising vegetables using organic methods and selling them at local farmers’ markets. In 1985, Cinzori Farms received certification on 2 acres, and became one of the first farms in Michigan to be certified by OGM.
Don found that marketing vegetables in wholesale markets was more profitable than selling the corn and soybeans they had been growing on most of their acreage, even when the vegetables were not sold as organic. Demand for their vegetables was increasing, so they shifted some acreage from grains to vegetable production to add more crops, and expanded to sell at a total of 5 farmers’ markets by the late 1980s. Given that there were few organic vegetable farmers at the time, to get advice about organic farming, Don attended organic seminars and conferences, and got general information and advice about growing vegetables from Michigan State University Extension agents and from conventional farmers.
By the 1990s, the Cinzoris had 20 acres in vegetable production, and as of today, they are up to about 60 acres of a wide variety of fresh organic produce. His son, Anthony, helps to run the farm business full-time, but other family members help at farmers’ markets and in other ways. Don credits his success to a few things--diversified crops, a willingness to try new things, and relentless marketing. Diversified crops help the farm withstand crop failures and satisfy the interests of varied wholesale buyers such as restaurants, food coops, grocery stores and farmers’ markets. Adding a small lean-to shelter as a greenhouse was a new venture started because they needed transplants for their vegetables. Anthony has now developed the farm’s greenhouse production to include 6 full-size greenhouses for extended season growing.
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