The Organic Research Hub
By Brian Geier, OFRF Communications Manager. This article was originally published in the Fall 2025 Organic Broadcaster by Marbleseed.
Every day, farmers make decisions that can have short-term and long-term effects on our farms. And as organic farmers, we depend on complex, intertwining relationships amongst all the moving parts of an organic system to work with us: plants, animals, soils, climate, microbes, workers, insects, processors, consumers, and more. To put it mildly, good information is key for our success, and wrong or misguided information can be costly.
Many farmers will tell you that the best information comes from our experiences on the land. “A farmer’s footstep is the best fertilizer,” they say. Our second-best source of information, reflected in survey after survey, is the information farmers get from other farmers. Third may arguably be what we find using the internet. But there, we risk running into an overwhelming array of sources of info with varying degrees of reliability, which may or may not be accessible or useful to anyone, let alone organic farmers!
Introducing the Organic Research Hub
A new tool seeks to remedy this overwhelm, and it is worthy of a close look. The Organic Research Hub, launched in early 2025 by the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF), is a curated collection of scientific and technical resources to help organic farmers understand and solve their challenges. It is a gateway to research and resources that are applicable to organic farmers, and it is a connection place between farmers, researchers, technical service providers, and extension agents.
Ohio dairy farmer Jordan Settlage, who serves on the Organic Stewardship Council for OFRF, described his first experience testing out the “Hub” at a recent advisory meeting:
