What are the challenges faced by local artisan food producers?

A problem we face is the state of organic certification as performed by the USDA. For instance, all the coffee we roast is certified organic. However, our competitors will also put "organic" on their labels without the certification. The only thing they lack is the USDA stamp. Unfortunately, the USDA doesn't enforce the truth in labeling aspect. So that leaves us attempting to educate consumers while paying money to the USDA for our certification and jumping through more and more hoops in order to prove to the USDA that our beans are in fact organic as advertised. There has also been a successful push by large corporate entities for the USDA to relax the standards in order for the big boys to qualify for the certification.

As the founder of http://undiscoveredkitchen.com/ I work with hundreds of artisan makers – From the perspective of selling products nationally, one of the biggest challenges artisans face is the cost of freight/shipping which can drastically affect the per unit price of an item. Cost in general is also higher for these products because their typically using premium ingredients – organic, gluten free, junk-free –  and often making them by hand using very little industrial machines/power – which are both contributing factors to their over all high quality, which is reflected in the price.