It's National Organic Week in Canada, with events across the country to celebrate organic food, farming, and products. But for Kroeker Farms of southern Manitoba, organic farming isn't about recipe tastings or farmers markets, it's large-scale, business as usual.

"We've started organic about twelve years ago, and we started on a small-scale, almost experimental," says Wayne Rempel, president and CEO of Kroeker farms. "[Now] it's a pretty significant part of our operation... I'm sure we're the largest organic potato farm in Canada."

Over the twelve years, they've expanded past potatoes, into crops like organic onions and hemp because consumer demand has continued to grow over the past decade.

With such a big operation, Rempel says some people think bigger isn't better when it comes to organic farming, but for them, it's been a key to success.

"The size we have has also given us the tools and resources to take on an enterprise like this, it would be very difficult to do it on a small scale," he says, "I can hardly imagine how small-scale farmers do it because there are just so many things to look after."

That's because Canada's Organic Products Regulations require farmers to be certified before they can call their products organic. Organic food production has very strict regulations, which Rempel says results in more paperwork and planning than conventional farming.

"When we first got into organic farming, we thought we'd just go back 60 years and do it like great-grandfather did, but soon found out it's quite the opposite. It's way more sophisticated than conventional farming in some ways, and way more work -- and certainly way more management," Rempel says.

As an example, Rempel says in conventional farming, when the soil needs nutrients, they add fertilizer. But for organic farming, they need to plan ahead to find manure sources to compost, then plan to strategically apply it. Plus they have to figure pest-control with limited chemical options.

"It's quite different, but it's been good for us," Rempel says. "It's affected us in how we do conventional farming, as well."

While not all consumers choose organic food, the demand is there. Rempel says Kroeker Farms had some struggles starting out, but now they've got things worked out, they plan to continue with their organic operations.