Empowering You

At Sown & Grown, our philosophy is empowering you, the consumer, to understand where your produce is coming from and how it was cultivated. Every purchase made from Sown & Grown helps us to help you gain this important insight. Use this page to gain an understanding of how we work to empower you to make better-informed choices.

Trust

The closer you are to the source of the produce, the greater the trust.  From our own farms, we guarantee every statement made about how our produce was cultivated. When sourcing from other farms, we gather as much information as possible from the farmers and pass their statements on to you. 

What is 'organic' produce?

The term "organic" can mean different things to different people. It can refer to produce which has been sourced from farms bearing organic certifications, or it can refer to produce cultivated in good faith without the use of synthetic pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers.

Certified organic produce must meet very high international standards. In Central America, very few farms maintain organic certification from authorities like the USDA, NOP, and OCIA, and those that do most often exclusively export their products to North America and Europe.

In Latin America, some farms do cultivate with organic practices, but haven't been able to meet certified organic standards due to runoff and blow-over from neighboring farms, or simply because of the costs involved in obtaining and maintaining organic certification.

Understanding our produce

We gather as much information as possible from farmers, distributors, and gatherers, and we pass their statements on to you. 

Except where products are sourced from our own farms, product information on this website comes from third parties. We cannot guarantee the reliability of statements made to us by third parties, and no such guarantees are expressed or implied.

As we grow, we will keep working to bring you more accurate, more reliable information. This includes copies of supplier agreements made with source farmers and distributors, bringing a layer of accountability to their statements. We are also pursuing product testing through local firms to verify the authenticity of claims made. These agreements, and the test results, will appear on this website over time.

Every product available through Sown & Grown is tagged with the following information. Here's what to look for:

• By-us: This tag means the product was cultivated on one of our own farms, and we can thereby guarantee our statements about how it was cultivated.
• Certified Organic: This tag means the product was sourced from a farm bearing organic certification from an accredited authority.
• Organic: This tag means the product was sourced from a farm which, according to the farmer, refrains from using synthetic pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers.
• Pesticides: This tag means the product may have been cultivated with the use of synthetic pesticides.
• Herbicides: This tag means the product may have been cultivated with the use of synthetic herbicides.
• Fertilizers: This tag means the product may have been cultivated with the use of synthetic fertilizers.

If we aren't able to obtain good-faith assurances that a product was cultivated free of synthetic pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers, we will assume it was and tag the product accordingly.

Except where Certified Organic is specified, cross-contamination from neighboring farms can never be ruled out conclusively. Runoff and blow-over from adjacent properties can lead to trace amounts of synthetic pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers appearing in the end product.

Except where Certified Organic is specified, we rely exclusively on our source farms to tell us about their farming practices. We pass that information on to you, so that you can make a better-informed choice, but we cannot make any guarantees about third-party statements.

Our Mission

At Sown & Grown, our mission is to incentivize better, more wholesome farming practices in Central America. We aim to do that by empowering you, the consumer, to make better-informed choices about your food, and to hold food producers to higher standards of accountability. It is our hope that by enabling you to vote with your wallet, we can elevate farming practices in Central America to the benefit of everyone.