When vegetable grower Atina Diffley and her husband, Martin, started their organic operation in 1973, they did not have many other organic producers to advise them.

“A lot of what we had access to, as far as information to start our systems, was more philosophical. It wasn’t real easy,” said Diffley, an organic vegetable grower near Farmington, Minn. “Not only was the market not developed, but there weren’t systems in place and there weren’t farms to go visit to see what other people were doing.”

That is one reason Diffley has applied to be a mentor in the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service’s (MOSES) pilot mentoring program. The one-year program links successful organic farmers to transitioning vegetable, crop or dairy farmers.

Harriet Behar, MOSES outreach program coordinator, says MOSES is setting up a framework to connect farmers.

“They will decide how best to communicate with each other,” Behar said.

MOSES is looking for nine mentors and 18 farmers wishing to be mentored. The cost for the beginning organic farmers is $200. With their application fee, they get a year of mentoring and free admission to the 2008 and 2009 Organic Farming Conference in La Crosse, Wis. - Feb. 21-23, 2008.

Behar says MOSES came up with trying a mentoring program after visiting with some of the experienced organic farmers and finding out how they became successful.

“Almost all of them said, ‘I had a mentor.’ Just having that support behind them helped them move forward in a more confident way, and then they were able to be more successful that way,” Behar said.

While Behar has only been on staff with MOSES for two years, she had worked for three years as an independent contractor for MOSES and for 17 years as an organic inspector in the Upper Midwest. In her position with MOSES, she runs an organic hotline where she can answer producer questions.

“I get a lot of calls and I have repeat callers who would really like someone to come to their farm and help them because they want to know if this is what they’re looking for,” Behar said.

By participating in the mentoring program, they may be able to find more answers to their questions, as well as support.

Since Diffley did not have many resources to go to when she got started, she hopes this program will really help new farmers.

“That’s probably one of the reasons this is so important to me is to take some of that learning curve time out of it,” Diffley said. “So right now there is a good network of farmers that we share observations and help each other with ideas, what we’re seeing, but it’s informal.”

According to Diffley, the organic market has grown 20-25 percent a year since 1990, while the conventional food market has grown by 3 percent.

Diffley has experienced a lot since they started their operation in 1973. She says many university and Extension people thought they were crazy in the beginning.

“They said you couldn’t do it, but our experience is that it’s very economically viable, a very efficient way of farming, very logical,” Diffley said. “Once you get your system down, it works very well.”

One thing Diffley has found is that they have less crop loss, disease and pest pressure on their farm compared to their conventional counterparts in their area of Minnesota. In fact, they have found their operation can withstand drought better.

“In a year that’s stressful, we do much better,” Diffley said. “Our systems are better able to withstand adverse conditions, better to withstand drought or too much rain, because it’s looking at the whole picture.”

To learn more about the mentoring program through MOSES or their conference, go online to http://www.moses

organic.org, or call Behar at (888) 551-4769. Applications are due by Jan. 31.