Earth Net Foundation hosted a workshop on Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) for organic agriculture on January 16, 2014. Dennis Enright, an organic farmer, and committee member both at the local and national level for Organic Farm New Zealand (OFNZ) had hosted one of our staff last year. Now it was our turn to host Dennis. His visit started with this gathering of Thai groups/ organizations interested and trying out PGS systems.
Dennis started by explaining the process as it is done with OFNZ. An interested farmer needs to find a local “Pod” or group to join. This may be done by meeting a Pod member at a farmers’ market or such or by sending an email to the national office which will send the contact of a local Pod coordinator. Then the key steps are to fill out paperwork describing your farming situation/ management/ etc (Property Management Plan), and then join in a peer review process. The peer review process is done once per year, when all of the Pod members join to visit and review each Pod member’s farm, filling out a review form. A Pod can have from 3 to 6 members. The paperwork is then passed to the certification manager. Each regional committee has a Certification Manager (CM) and an Auditor. The auditor will then do an audit of one member of the Pod comparing with the paperwork. The CM then convenes a committee to review the paperwork and give a recommendation. If all is ok farmers will receive their farmer certificates and have the right to use the OFNZ logo in promotion. In Dennis’ case, they have the logo in front of their home near their farm stand. They also bring a sign with the logo to show in front of their booth at farmers’ markets.
Many of those who joined felt this PGS system was very similar to formal certification here in Thailand. It should be said that while it is quite like group or project certification having an Internal Control System, there is yet to be much acceptance of group certification by certification agencies in developed countries. So for the most part those who wish to certify must do so on their own with the certifier, paying the costs this requires. This system also gives each farmer a certificate who can sell and market on his or her own.
Dennis explained that for him personally and for the development of OFNZ, cost was the most important factor. For many small-scale farmers such as Dennis, the cost of certification outweighed the benefit as farm income is low. However they like Dennis were committed to using only organic farm management techniques. When the OFNZ PGS developed, this provided an affordable option. While fees are set by each regional group and vary a little, in Dennis’ case, the annual fee is $375 NZ. Of this $100 goes to the Certification Manager, $100 goes to the Auditor, $120 goes to the National Office, and the rest stays with the regional group. This is less than 1/3 of what the cost would be for 3rd party certification. While OFNZ is not recognized for export, among consumers in New Zealand, they do not see the OFNZ certification as in any way inferior. As Dennis said, for them if they see the organic label, they feel this is enough.
While this cost is less, as we discussed, there are other obligations, most notably that one needs to take part in the peer review process with one’s fellow pod members visiting each others farms, asking questions, and filling out the form. There are also other activities that are encouraged for all to join such a meetings and field days. For Dennis though, this expense in time is really one of the core values of joining such a participatory process. Particularly for new farmers, getting to see what other farmers are doing and getting their perspective and advice when they visit your farm is really valuable. To keep the costs low, much of the work done is voluntary and pay to those who take on larger roles, such as the Certification Managers, and Auditors, is low. The national office has a manager working only 1 paid day a week, sharing a joint office space. As there are only about 150 farmer members paying $120 each to the national office, this efficiency is necessary. Many of us listening were surprised at this low number considering that even one of the larger PGS projects we are developing could have more than 150 farming families participating.
A last interesting point that Dennis discussed in some length was about the evolution of the OFNZ system to be more standardized and equivalent for the whole of New Zealand. When they started, the idea was to allow a lot of flexibility as to the way of operation, forms, etc that each regional group uses. However as this PGS is recognized throughout New Zealand and products guaranteed by this system are being traded and sold between different provinces and areas, and as the national committee, which is made up of representatives from each regional group, decides about disputes, settles standards and forms, and organizes the training of CM and auditors, there was a clear need for consistency between groups. Thus while there was some debate and fighting of this evolution, now all groups use the same basic forms, and have the same basic process. This makes it easy and clear to say any OFNZ guaranteed product meets the same standards. As far as standards used, OFNZ decided to use the same set of standards as used by BioGro, the IFOAM accredited certification body based in New Zealand. These standards were already in public domain allowing their legal use, however OFNZ does not mention BioGro as the certification process is separate and distinct. The general relationship between OFNZ and BioGro sounds quite positive, Dennis now plays a role with both organizations and there a number of cases where OFNZ farmers have gone on to get BioGro certification when this made sense, such as to meet an export demand.
This last point created quite a bit of discussion between the 20 of us present, all working to develop PGS in Thailand one way or another. For a number, this system seems too similar to 3rd party certification. These people felt we still need to have a lot of flexibility to develop different methods and standards. Vitoon R. Panyakul presented a bit about the work Green Net has done to help develop different Organic+ PGS systems for GNSE’s “Organic Forest Coffee,” Sawang Boran’s organic fair trade silk (fabric and garments), and Wanakaset’s Organic Agroforestry System. In each of these cases, the flexibility of PGS allows one to add other standards deemed important by these groups, such a farm biodiversity minimums in the case of Wanakaset to which my family is also a member, or Sawang Boran’s standards to require fabrics to be 100% naturally dyed and hand woven. Dennis was quite interested to see how PGS was opening up such opportunities and encouraged our further efforts. Where the debate became more heated was on the point of developing a common mark. We could see that the common nationally recognized PGS mark of OFNZ was serving a valuable marketing purpose while helping the organic choice to not be a confusing one for consumers there. The problem was that a common mark and promotion means that there must be at least mutual recognition of all of the PGS groups using this mark. In New Zealand this evolved into having each group use the same forms, standards, and process. Many of the Thai stakeholders did not feel they want to have one system for all, and we all recognized that we are just beginners in this process, so what is the best system or systems for Thai needs is yet to be determined. Even the way to translate PGS to Thai could be debated and there are a few translations at present. Nakorn, of City Farm (the leading urban farming movement), said in the end this will be decided by what word sticks. I know when I started with Green Net 10 years ago, many other stakeholders didn’t like and were not using the term “Organic Farming” or its Thai translation “Kaset Insee.” But now these words are well recognized, while other terms have faded in use.
While my personal opinion that Vitoon’s concept of mutual recognition based upon certain (few) minimum standards and a peer verification that each process does in fact work to check and develop the performance of its members could be the answer to allow flexibility while allowing for development of a common mark and promotion, this debate was not settled. There was general consensus that now is the time to experiment and get these PGS systems operational and to learn from this process. With time and experience, we should all be a bit clearer on what works and what doesn’t. For a next meeting of this developing PGS network, it is planned that the focus will be on this sharing of practical experience of the different Thai groups practicing PGS. Thus we can learn from each other, and hopefully use this interesting tool to further develop opportunity for small-scale farmers, broadening the benefits of organic farming to our country and those involved.
By Michael B. Commons, Earth Net Foundation
