DAVID GOULD1
Where We Are
Eighty-eight government organic regulations in force, 12 more in draft stages (2012). Over 100 private organic standards. More than 550 certification bodies. Numerous accreditation systems. Participatory Guarantee Systems. More country-to-country agreements and recognitions. It cannot be denied: the number of organic actors and corresponding interactions to control the market continues to rise.
There are increasing demands for credible guarantees in the market – by consumers and regulators alike, especially in light of serious fraud cases. At the same time, there are increasing demands for organic farmers and value chain actors to serve a broadening organic consumer base. Local, national, and export markets – those buyers and consumers all want to believe that they are really getting what they are paying for. And their governments are determined to protect these interests, one way or another. But more rules often means more barriers – more bureaucracy, more time, more cost… The organic movement understands the need to evolve its market guarantee systems so that organic products can become the mainstream instead of merely occupying a growing “niche.” The evolution needed is quantum and will likely take years to fully manifest; but all of the pieces are available.
Taking action on the present
The International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) is taking the lead using both short-term long-term strategies. In the short-term, it is working to increase market access, maintain credibility of standards, break down trade barriers, gain efficiencies, and protect against fraud.
Organic producers have options for selling their goods locally through farmers markets, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA’s), or other direct-to-consumer channels. In these cases, how much of a formal guarantee is needed? Sometimes it is regulated by law, but trust building between producer and consumer can happen in less formal ways. IFOAM encourages development of these types of relationships. After all, certification as we have come to know it is only a proxy for the trust gained through real knowledge of the producer by the consumer.
Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) are gaining widespread interest and are forming across the globe.2They have the added benefit of capacity building for producers in addition to trust building among consumers. Mostly used for local marketing, PGS’ proven performance is earning them recognition equivalent to third-party certification in some markets, overcoming barriers to market entry posed by high costs and bureaucracy commonly found in certification systems, especially for smaller producers.
1 David Gould, IFOAM Value Chain Facilitator, International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements
(IFOAM), Charles-de-Gaulle Strasse 5, 53113 Bonn, Germany, www.ifoam.org
These forms of selling augment the organic sector’s historic reliance on third-party certification systems and contribute to a broadening basis for mainstreaming organic into the future.
IFOAM’s Family of Standards is a primary framework for guaranteeing that an organic standard adequately describes globally recognized expectations for what organic producers should do and their products represent. Whether the standard is for a national regulation, a private certification program, or a PGS, inclusion in the Family is an assurance that what is required has been carefully and consistently benchmarked by IFOAM experts for equivalence against widely accepted norms, namely the COROS (Common Objectives and Requirements of Organic Standards). With over 50 approved standards included and growing, the Family of Standards is the model for multilateral recognition and equivalence agreements. While bilateral country-to-country recognition arrangements continue to be announced, these are stepping-stones to the efficiency gained through multilateral recognitions that achieve the same ends with less work. (See also Gould 2013).
Analog in a digital age
Third-party certification and related assurance mechanisms, as currently practiced, use older – even outdated – modes of information transfer. The flash drives and e-mailed documents used today are still merely digital compressions of stacks of paper used before. While a certain amount of documentary evidence is needed to uphold most kinds of guarantees, experience shows that in almost all cases there is still something missing – namely adequate controls to discourage, prevent, or detect fraud. Fraudulent certificates and lack of quantity tracking threaten confidence in organic claims.
Modern data and information transfer systems provide solutions. Databases are being implemented to validate certification data such as operator names, products, and the standards and regulations with which they comply, in real time and in ways that prevent fraudulent certificates. Similarly, systems that can track and trace quantities from producer to final consumption assure that claimed organic products are indeed those which are controlled by the guarantee system (certification or otherwise). Keeping data in centralized systems like these also saves time and money for everyone in the value chain, by reducing redundant data entry and assuring common information used through secure, user-specific access permissions. The gains in efficiency and credibility have a direct impact on the ability of the organic sector to grow. IFOAM is working with partners in the organic movement on the design and implementation of these systems, and even further, to facilitate the interoperability of these systems to cover the globe comprehensively with real-time validation of certified organic products.
Innovative uses of information and communications technologies (ICT) are opening doors of transparency that are allowing guarantee systems to re-think how more people’s efforts can be harnessed to share the workload of credible assurance, thereby allowing for greater market access and scalability. Who provides information is not as important as how credible the information is. Moving into the future, more people will be able to be involved in assuring market guarantees are credible. This can ease burden on certification bodies, provide better information, and clear bottlenecks.
Standards and Regulations: Organic Guarantee Systems
Envisioning the future
In the longer term, there is a need to re-think and restructure both the nature and content of organic guarantees. Some stakeholders are concerned that the term “organic” is not relevant enough in these modern times, where competing sustainability labels address issues that most organic regulations (and even private organic standards) currently do not address so well, such as human rights, fair trading relationships, energy, and waste streams.
In an effort to re-position organic as the core approach to sustainability in agriculture, IFOAM and partners in the Sustainable Organic Agriculture Action Network (SOAAN) developed the Best Practice Guideline for Agriculture and Value Chains. This foundational document shows how organic practices are not the “top” but are rather the “base” or “core” onto which a broader implementation of sustainable practices needs to occur.
Using the Best Practice Guideline as a basis, IFOAM is now engaging leading organic standards schemes in a Best Practice Community, where standards owners, leading companies, and sustainability evaluation tools can showcase and share their learning and achievements for common benefit. These leading standards will also be part of the IFOAM Family of Standards, further increasing the amount of organic actors considered in this basic frame of credibility.
Looking further into the future, IFOAM and SOAAN are envisioning what organic guarantees need in order to assure that organic claims are a relevant market guarantee, namely encompassing a full spectrum of sustainability issues as described in the Best Practice Guideline: that organic production really moves toward realization of the Principles of Organic Agriculture. This will have to be possible in a way that does not overwhelm farmers and value chain actors with more burdens and verification requirements. In short, this is a potentially huge overhaul of organic certification, as we know it today into a different kind of guarantee. ICT tools, innovative ways of involving people through transparency and other forms of stakeholder participation, and increasing clarity of what are true indicators of organic performance can be combined into a new evolution of credible organic guarantee(s). It will likely take several years to arrive at consensus among stakeholders about what such a guarantee looks like, and more time to implement. Visioning and planning is beginning. IFOAM invites all interested stakeholders to participate in this evolution.
References
Gould, David (2013): The Organic Guarantee System: Keeping up with the Times. In: FiBL & IFOAM (2013): The World of Organic Agriculture. Statistics and Emerging Trends 2013. Frick and Bonn. More information: http://www.organic-world.net/yearbook-2013.html
International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) [online]: The IFOAM Best Practice Program. The Sustainable Organic Agriculture Action Network (SOAAN). The IFOAM website. Download: http://www.ifoam.org/en/value-chain/ifoam-best-practice-program. Accessed December 30, 2013.