Smallholder Group Certification for Organic Production & Processing

The majority of agriculture practitioners worldwide are smallholders.

Adoption of organic agriculture, a sustainable environmental friendly management system, is vitally linked to market access. It is imperative that small operators are not marginalized and unduly excluded from the organic sector due to factors beyond their control.

Standards must allow for local equivalence and certification systems must be innovative and cost efficient enough to address smallholders’ situation worldwide, particularly in developing countries.

In this submission we give our opinion about group certification for smallholders in developing countries. However we also want to point out that there may be a number of other situations where group certification concepts may be relevant and applicable, and we would like in a nearby future also to have a dialogue on these issues.