sented at a GOMA workshop in Shanghai in May. GOMA also provides tools
that can help any country understand
international requirements for organic
certification bodies and assess the
equivalency of other nations’ standards with their own.
Despite the importance of projects
like GOMA, the recent conclusion of
the world’s first fully reciprocal agreement between regulated organic systems in Canada and the U.S., and the
new EU regulation introducing procedures for approving certification bodies from outside the EU, much still
remains to be done. While bilateral
agreements are a good start, they need
to become more widespread in order
to be truly effective. Currently, however, no system for multilateral equivalence agreements between
government regulations has even been
discussed.
Growing the Movement in
Developing Countries
Through the standardization of the
organic sector, accompanied by increased international trade, third-party
certification has become the norm in
most developed organic markets. However, particularly where organic markets are still in their infancy,
Participatory Guarantee Systems
(PGSs) can be a powerful instrument
to develop the sector and empower
smallholders who would otherwise
struggle to cope with the cost and
heavy documentation associated with
third-party (ISO-type) certification.
PGSs are locally focused quality as-
surance systems that certify producers
based on the active participation of
stakeholders including local con-
sumers, and are built on a foundation
of trust, social networks and knowl-
edge exchange. These organic farmers
make a public declaration to uphold
the principles of organic agriculture
and consumers are able to interact
with farmers to build trust. An exam-
ple is Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)—where the stakeholders (com-
munity) are able to get to know their farmers, discuss growing methods with
them, and become a “member” of the farm.
MAY — JUNE 2010
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