SACRAMENTO, Calif. — It's been barely a year since Luis Miranda began selling organic produce at farmers markets near his home in California's Central Valley, but he's already seen every trick in the book.

Scanning the stands recently at a market in Sacramento, Miranda pointed out a half-dozen examples of misleading signs and labels.

Higher prices for organic produce give farmers an incentive to look for ways around the costly and time-consuming organic certification process. The result can be shoppers who don't get what they pay for and true organic producers who are undersold.

To cut down on such fraud, California is launching a new effort to enforce rules governing the fast-growing, $1.1 billion organic industry that many say has thus far been a poorly regulated free-for-all.