Why the Common Organic System Plan May Be the Most Important Step Since the Organic Foods Production Act
For more than three decades, the USDA Organic label has become one of the most trusted food labels in the world.
That trust wasn't built by technology.
It was built by farmers, inspectors, certifiers, reviewers, processors, handlers, retailers, and consumers who believed organic agriculture was worth protecting.
Yet behind one of the world's most respected labels lies a certification system that has changed very little since the early days of the National Organic Program.
That is beginning to change.
At the Spring 2026 National Organic Standards Board meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, Dr. Jenny Tucker of the USDA National Organic Program said it plainly: “The time is right.”
She was speaking about the Common Organic System Plan — and she was right.
The USDA National Organic Program recently released the Common Organic System Plan (Common OSP), providing a standardized set of Organic System Plan templates that certifiers may voluntarily adopt. The goal is simple: create greater consistency, improve efficiency, and strengthen the organic certification process across the industry.
While the Common OSP may appear to be a new set of forms, it represents something much larger.
It creates the foundation for an entirely new organic ecosystem.
The State of Organic Certification Today
Organic certification today remains heavily dependent on paper forms, spreadsheets, email attachments, PDFs, filing cabinets, and manual data entry.
Many producers spend weeks every year preparing annual updates. Office staff often spend countless hours requesting missing documentation. Reviewers repeat many of the same verification steps. Inspectors frequently review records that could have been organized digitally long before the inspection begins.
Producers feel it too.
It was so streamlined… It almost wove the bigger picture together for me.
Every participant in the certification process works hard. The system itself simply asks them to do too much repetitive work.
This is not because anyone has failed. It is because the technology infrastructure has never caught up with the complexity of modern organic agriculture.
A Common Language for Organic
The Common OSP changes the conversation.
For the first time, the industry has a standardized framework that every producer, certifier, inspector, reviewer, processor, livestock operation, and handler can understand.
Standardization creates consistency.
Consistency creates efficiency.
Efficiency creates opportunity.
When everyone begins from the same foundation, innovation becomes possible.
Quick Organics was honored to collaborate with the USDA, the Accredited Certifiers Association, Wolf & Associates, and numerous industry stakeholders during the development of the Common OSP — and has built the only digital certification platform designed from the ground up around this framework. Today, more than 600 certified operations across the country are already working within it.
Looking Ahead Thirty Years
Imagine an organic producer opening one secure digital account.
Instead of filling out dozens of disconnected documents each year, their Organic System Plan becomes a living record. Field activities are recorded throughout the season. Equipment cleaning is documented as work happens. Input approvals are stored automatically. Harvest records connect directly to storage records. Storage records connect to sales.
Annual certification becomes less about recreating paperwork and more about verifying a year's worth of documented compliance. The annual renewal becomes an update rather than a rebuild.
Better for Producers
The greatest beneficiaries are the producers.
Less paperwork means more time managing crops, livestock, employees, and profitability. Beginning organic producers face fewer administrative barriers. Existing producers spend less time preparing for inspections. Instead of wondering which documents are missing, they always know where they stand.
Producers who have experienced this shift describe it simply:
Quick Organics makes the certification process so much easier to navigate — it's user-friendly, efficient, and saves us from the messy print–sign–scan cycle.
Better for Certifiers
Certification agencies benefit as well.
Office staff spend less time requesting missing information. Reviewers receive more complete applications. Inspectors arrive with better organized documentation. Resources shift away from administrative work toward education, technical assistance, and improving organic integrity.
Everyone spends more time adding value instead of chasing paperwork.
Better for the Entire Industry
Perhaps the greatest long-term opportunity lies in data — not personal business information, but anonymous trends that help strengthen the industry.
Imagine understanding organic acreage trends by region, crop rotations across the country, growth in livestock sectors, transition trends into organic production, emerging supply shortages, regional production strengths, and long-term soil health improvements.
For the first time, policymakers could better understand where the organic industry is growing and where additional support may be needed.
Building an Organic Ecosystem
Certification should never exist in isolation.
The future organic ecosystem can include educational resources, transition planning, recordkeeping tools, budgeting resources, calculators, compliance support, document management, and eventually connections between producers, buyers, processors, and service providers.
Certification becomes the starting point — not the finish line.
Protecting Trust
Technology should never replace inspectors. It should never replace certifiers. It should never replace the USDA Organic standards.
Instead, technology should strengthen every one of them.
The integrity of organic certification has always depended upon transparency and documentation. Digital tools simply make that transparency easier to achieve.
A Generational Opportunity
Every generation has an opportunity to improve the systems it inherits.
The organic pioneers established standards that consumers trust. Today's leaders have an opportunity to modernize how those standards are administered.
The Common Organic System Plan may one day be remembered as more than a standardized form. It may be remembered as the moment the organic industry began building a connected ecosystem capable of supporting the next thirty years of growth.
Organic agriculture has always been about stewardship. Now we have an opportunity to practice that same stewardship in the way we certify, document, and strengthen the future of organic farming.
Quick Organics will help small businesses and large businesses streamline the process in a way they don't know yet.
Ready to experience what digital-first organic certification looks like? Start your free 12-month trial at quickorganics.com.
About the Author
Greg Schreiner is the Founder & Advisor of Quick Organics and a certified organic farmer based in Colorado. After purchasing a set of certified organic farms in Wellington, Colorado in 2013, Greg spent years navigating the complexities of organic certification firsthand before co-founding Quick Organics in 2021. His mission is to make organic certification simpler, more consistent, and more accessible for every role in the organic system.