They lobby regulators: Grupo Balbo, a Brazilian organic-sugar producer, is working with the Brazilian government to establish a certification system for organic products.
Last year, the California Assembly passed legislation providing for an unusual public-private certification system for organic produce.
This preference can be partly explained by consumer preferences and doubts about the authenticity of the organic claim for foods produced in countries where the system of organic certification and control is little known.
In addition, national organic standards and certification systems need to be harmonised, as some countries refuse to label as 'organic' the products imported from countries where standards and regulations are different from theirs, hence increasing compliance costs of exporting countries.
However, these constraints should ease as countries establish systems of organic certification that are recognized as equivalent to the European ones.
Its organic coffee was Fair Trade, a certification system meant to ensure that farmers and laborers in developing countries toil in proper working conditions and get decent wages.
Additionally, organic farmers have heavily criticized the program, including Vernon Peterson, a grower and organic food packer in Kingsburg, California, who recently told NPR that the new system undermines the organic certification and label.
(i) Approved country status: awarded to countries with a certification system equivalent to Japanese organic law.
"Everything in agriculture has been built around a simplified rotation of one or two crops," said Rich Welsh, an agriculture economist and rural sociologist at the Henry A. Wallace Institute in Beltsville, Md .To grow more crops in rotation -- a requirement for organic certification -- farmers would need to develop an array of new markets and systems for storing and distributing their products.
The fee system would be subject to a vote by the more than 19,400 organic certification holders, and governed by an board appointed by USDA.
FAO urges creation of a certification system and establishment of a central national authority responsible for development and coordination of the organic production system.
