Best Practices for Organic Policy - What developing country - UNEP

What developing country Governments can do to promote the organic agriculture sector
Data
The demand for data about the organic sector is high for marketers, researchers, extension services
and ultimately Governments. In most countries, including developed countries such as the United
States, there is no central collection even of basic data such as the number of farmers and what they
grow 20 . A country with only one certification body (e.g. Denmark or Norway) will more or less
automatically get a lot of relevant data collected in one place, but it is not always the case that the data
is made available. Costa Rica collects data for production, but market figures are based on estimates
from an NGO. Export market data is often easier to collect, especially as the certification bodies
normally issue transaction certificates for each lot, and therefore all trade is documented. Egypt and
Chile can produce fairly accurate data for exports, but not for the domestic market. In unregulated
markets, or markets where there is no common definition of organic, such as Thailand and Malaysia,
an additional complication for data collection is the question “Who is really organic?” FAO collects
data in the Organic Agriculture Information Management System (Organic-AIMS) available at
www.fao.org/organicag, and IFOAM annually publishes the World of Organic Agriculture, both of
which are dependent on submissions by individuals from the countries. A consortium of institutions is
attempting to develop a European Information System for Organic Markets. Ultimately, any
Government that wants to develop the sector needs to assure baseline data and a system to monitor the
development of the sector. Initially, this is likely to be best achieved through the organic movement in
the country, and Governments should consider supporting them in their data collections. When the
sector is more developed, measures to include “organic” data in public agriculture statistics should be
considered.
Recommendation 9. Data about organic production and markets needs to be
collected over the years, analysed and made available to the sector and policymakers.
Organic regulations, standards and certification
Standards
There are currently two international standards for organic agriculture, the Codex Alimentarius
Guidelines for the production, processing, labelling and marketing of organically produced foods (GL
32 – 1999, Rev. 1 – 2001) - CAC/ GL32 21 - and the IFOAM Basic Standards (published as part of the
IFOAM Norms, latest revision July 2005 22 ). There are perhaps 70 countries with some kind of official
standards and another 100 private sector standards. Most of the standards are quite similar. Some of
them clearly reference the mentioned international standards (e.g. the Indian regulation is basically
identical to the IFOAM standards of 2002, the Brazilian regulation uses the list of inputs from Codex,
Malaysia’s standards reference both), but a number of them also reference other foreign standards, in
particular the EU regulation (e.g. South Africa).
Of the case studies, Costa Rica, Chile and Denmark have mandatory organic standards, i.e. standards
that have to be followed by anyone who markets organic foods. In Costa Rica, private bodies also
have their own standards. Chile has had a voluntary official standard since 1999, which became
mandatory in 2006. In Thailand, there are both private standards and voluntary governmental
standards. In Malaysia there is a voluntary official standard, but most certified products are imported
and certified to the standards of the exporting country. There is no indication that the voluntary
official standards are in much use. At the same time, the South African standard for organic
agriculture has been drafted since 2001 but was never approved by the Government; nevertheless, the
standard is actively used in the domestic market in South Africa. In Egypt, products are certified to
the EU regulation, and to various private sector standards in the European Union – a few also to local
standards. In all the countries, producers for exports normally follow and are certified for conformity
to the export market standard. Even in Denmark, producers wanting to export to the United States
have to follow the NOP rather than the EU regulation. The cases highlight the fact that standards
20 For United States organic acreage, in February 2006 it was only possible to get data from 1997 and 2003.
21 Available at http://www.codexalimentarius.net/download/standards/360/CXG_032e.pdf.
22 Available at http://www.ifoam.org/about_ifoam/standards/norms.html
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