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About Organic Assistant

What is Organic Assistant?

Organic Assistant is a workspace for USDA organic certification. The idea behind it is simple: the files and records you already keep should become the first draft of your Organic System Plan, instead of paperwork you rewrite from scratch every year. It answers questions about National Organic Program (NOP) regulations, keeps your farm records in one place, and turns those records into OSP text you can review and hand to your certifier.

There are three ways in, depending on where you are. If you are already certified, you can bring an existing plan and records forward. If you are transitioning, you can build the plan and the recordkeeping habit at the same time. And if you have a pile of spreadsheets, receipts, and notes, importing your files is a way to get a first draft out of what you already have.

Organic Assistant is built and maintained by Harrow Software LLC, with support from the Midwest Transition to Organic Partnership Program (Midwest TOPP).

What you can do with it

Access differs by area, so each one below says what it needs. Some parts are open to everyone, some require an account, and the recordkeeping areas also need a farm set up first.

Ask certification questions

Answers responds to questions about the regulations, certifier expectations, and everyday organic practice, with citations back to the source. You can use it signed out as a guest; signing in is what saves your conversation history.

Keep your farm records

Records holds the logs an inspection asks for — planting, harvest, seed, inputs and amendments, purchases, inventory, and field notes — with a change history behind them. Records belong to the farm, so everyone you add to it works from one set of books. Requires an account and a farm.

Capture records from the field

FieldAgent is a Telegram bot that reads what your crew already sends — typed messages, voice memos, and photos of tags, labels, and invoices — and turns them into draft records for review, so nothing has to be entered twice at the end of the day. Requires an account and a farm to connect it to.

Import documents you already have

Document import reads spreadsheets, PDFs, and scanned paperwork and proposes records from them. The file you upload is stored when you send it, but nothing is written to your farm records until you confirm it. Uploads you never confirm are deleted automatically. Requires an account and a farm.

Build your Organic System Plan

The OSP builder walks the plan section by section, drafting from the records on file for your farm and flagging what is still missing. Requires an account.

Look up an input

Inputs is a searchable catalog of OMRI-listed products, so you can check a specific brand-name product before you buy it or write it into your plan. Requires an account.

Read the guides

Learn is a library of plain-language guides on certification topics — buffer zones, the three-year transition, the National List, labeling categories, inspection prep. It is open to everyone, no account needed.

How it works

Different kinds of questions are answered in different ways. It is worth knowing which is which, because only some of them cite a regulation and the rest are drafted from your own farm data.

Regulatory and certification guidance

When you ask about the rules, your question is searched against a curated library of official organic certification documents: federal regulations, NOP guidance, certifier handbooks, and extension resources. The most relevant passages are retrieved and graded for authority and relevance, and the answer is written from those passages with inline citations you can open and check. This is the part of the product that cites regulatory sources.

Input and product questions

Questions about a specific brand-name product are answered from the OMRI product catalog rather than the regulatory library, because a listing is a fact about that product, not a passage in the rules. Listings change over time, so treat a lookup as a starting point and confirm the current status with your certifier before you rely on it.

Record extraction

Messages, voice memos, photos, and uploaded documents are read by an AI model that pulls out the structured facts — a date, a field, a crop, a product, a quantity — and proposes a record. Extraction is a draft, not a decision: the record stays marked pending until a person reviews and approves it.

OSP drafting

OSP sections are written from your own farm records and the answers you give in the builder, not from a generic template and not from another farm. Where the regulations set a requirement for a section, that requirement is cited; the description of your operation comes from your data.

For certifiers

This section is addressed to certification staff, who reasonably ask what this tool does and does not do on a farmer's behalf. In short:

  • Organic Assistant does not submit anything to any certifier. There is no integration with any certifier's systems. Your own forms and portal remain the official submission.
  • A draft is a starting point, not a filed plan. Sections are organized around the NOP requirements they address and cite them; the farmer reviews and edits the text and adapts it into your forms. The app can also export the NOP Common OSP V1 Field & Crop Information Form and Materials List from the farm's own data. Those two forms list what the farm has entered without marking each row's review status, so they are a working document for the farmer to check, not an attested submission.
  • Every AI-extracted record is put to a person. Extraction proposes a record; it stays marked pending until someone on the farm approves it, and the approval time is recorded. Treat a record's review status, not its presence, as the farmer's attestation.
  • We are glad to share sample output for review, and to work toward certifier-specific templates. Write to luke@harrowsoftware.com.

Bibliography

The following sources inform the answers provided by Organic Assistant. These documents are indexed in our retrieval system and cited in responses.

Regulations

Federal regulations governing organic certification in the United States.

NOP Guidance

Official guidance documents, handbooks, and policy memos from the USDA National Organic Program.

Certifier Standards

Certification handbooks and standards from USDA-accredited certifying agents.

Industry Resources

Product directories, industry associations, and professional resources for organic certification.

Extension Resources

Educational materials, research guides, and practical farming resources from extension services.

Data Use & Privacy

This is a plain-language summary. The Privacy Policy and Terms of Service are the authoritative statements, and they govern if anything here reads differently.

  • Your conversations are saved to your account so you can return to them later. Guest conversations are not stored permanently.
  • Content you submit — questions, records, messages, and uploads — is stored and processed so we can provide the service to you.
  • AI providers. Anthropic's Claude generates certification answers, and Google Cloud services including Gemini are used to extract records from messages and documents.
  • Google Drive and Sheets. If you connect a Google account, we use it to read and write the farm files you authorize. Data received from Google APIs is handled under Google's Limited Use requirements: Google user data is not used for serving advertisements and is not transferred except as those requirements permit.
  • Analytics. We measure how the product is used so we can improve it.
  • We do not use your content to train AI models. Your questions, records, and uploads are sent to the AI providers above to generate answers and extract records, but they are not used to train AI models.
  • We never sell your data to third parties or use it for advertising.

How your data is protected

  • Encrypted in transit and at rest. Traffic to the app runs over HTTPS/TLS, and the database and file storage we use encrypt what they hold on disk.
  • Stored in your farm's account. Your records and plan belong to your farm and are visible to that farm's members — the people you invite, and anyone in a Telegram chat you link to it — not to other farms, and not to a certifier unless you share them yourself.
  • We do not use your content to train AI models. See the point above for what is sent to AI providers and why.
  • Exportable at any time. You can export your records and your OSP from the app whenever you want them.
  • Deleted on request. You can delete your account yourself from settings, or ask us to delete specific data. The Privacy Policy sets out what is removed and when.
  • Human review before a record counts as approved. An AI-extracted record is a proposal: it stays marked pending until a person on the farm approves it, and the approval time is recorded.

Contact & Feedback

Organic Assistant is a work in progress, and we welcome your feedback. If you have suggestions, find an error, or want to report a problem:

Harrow Software LLC
Email: support@organicassistant.app

Disclaimer

Organic Assistant is an educational tool designed to help you understand organic certification requirements. It is not a substitute for professional legal advice or direct consultation with your certifying agent. Always verify guidance with your certifier before making decisions that affect your certification status.

The same applies to what the product produces for you. A generated OSP draft is a starting point for your certifier, not a filed plan, and it is not submitted anywhere on your behalf. Records extracted from messages, photos, and uploaded documents are drafts that you must review for accuracy before an inspection.