Best Practices for Organic Policy - What developing country - UNEP

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Best Practices for Organic Policy Also in some developing countries, there are examples of direct support to organic producers mainly as investment support, e.g. in Tunisia (Twarog 2006) and Malaysia; or support for certification costs, e.g. in China and India; free certification, e.g. in Thailand and Malaysia; or credit incentives, e.g. in Costa Rica. Credit and investment support are often not easily available for small farms or to women farmers, maybe because they lack information or because they are not able to make the required contribution for investments, or they are not credit-worthy because of lack of land title or because of general poverty. If that is the case, credit or investment support schemes may amount to de facto discrimination of already disadvantaged producers. Special support measures should be designed for the small-farm sector, perhaps organized through their organizations. Recommendation 25. Direct support measures to producers need to be adapted to small farmers as well as to commercial operations. Extension service Extension services often concentrate on conventional farming, sometimes for reasons of policy, sometimes because of lack of knowledge of organic farming. Moreover, they are permanently underresourced in most developing countries. In many instances, they get posters, brochures and other materials from suppliers of agro-chemicals. Finally, their training methodology is often weak and based on a top-down approach, where farmers are instructed to use certain inputs or do certain things. This is hardly efficient for conventional farming, and is even less efficient for the organic farming system, which is based on continuous learning by the farmer and by the extension worker alike. In most cases, farmer-to-farmer exchange, participatory learning, farmer field schools and similar are well suited for organic producers. To a large extent, extension can build on traditional or indigenous knowledge. This is underlined in the studies from Costa Rica, Thailand and Egypt. A challenge for the organic extension is to retrain extension workers both in the topic and in the way of working. NGOs often have a long experience in working with participatory extension in organic farming and Governments could consider supporting that. Another option is to support organic extension integrated in commercial activities by a producer organization or private companies. In Chile, Costa Rica and Egypt, Governments have established special programmes for organic extension. In Denmark there is a specialized organic extension service, but organic is also integrated in general extension services. Recommendation 26. Organic extension services need to be established and the staff trained. Organic extension should be developed and implemented in a participatory manner and have the farm and the farmer as the centre of attention. Inputs (seeds, seedlings, pest control and fertilizers) For many, organic is about the substitution of agro-chemicals for natural products, e.g. instead of using a chemical pesticide, a plant extract is used; instead of chemical fertilizers, manures or compost are used. With that perspective, ensuring that there are appropriate inputs available for organic farmers or even supplying them to the farmers seem like good ways to promote organic farming. Thailand and India plan large-scale establishment of organic fertilizer factories. However, organic farming to a large extent uses site-specific, on-farm resources. In most cases, a chemical pesticide is not replaced with an organic pesticide, but with crop rotation, companion cropping or the use of a resistant variety. Similarly, the need for external fertilizers is often not great for farmers having a diverse system with good crop rotations, the use of green manures, etc. Furthermore, smallholders have little capacity to purchase either organic or chemical inputs. Therefore, an input substitution approach to organic is not an appropriate starting point for government intervention. Nevertheless, there are a number of organic production systems that are quite dependent on external inputs, especially in the horticultural sector. The integration of livestock and plant production that is a fundamental aspect of European organic farming is not the rule in most tropical production systems. Also, a number of pests pose real threats for organic farmers, and it can be a good “insurance” to have relevant inputs available. It should be recognized that there is a lot of traditional knowledge about the 32
What developing country Governments can do to promote the organic agriculture sector use of plants and other natural substances in pest control. This traditional knowledge has often been discredited and overlooked by the agronomic establishment. Supporting the dissemination and further development of traditional knowledge can play an important role. Recommendation 27. Traditional knowledge about pest control treatments et al. should be surveyed and brought into the extension service and disseminated in other ways. There are many leftover materials from the processing industry that are useful as fertilizers or soil improvement, e.g. coffee hulls and rice husks. Governments can survey these resources and make recommendation for the proper process to get them back to the agriculture systems. The appropriate recycling of organic matter, e.g. leftovers or waste from marketplaces and households, to the farm sector is important. This has the additional benefit of contributing to sanitation and environmental protection. Finally, the appropriate handling of human waste and its integration into the production system can provide much-needed nutrients to farms 46 . Recommendation 28. Recycling of agriculture and food waste into organic farming systems should be promoted. Industrial production of agriculture inputs, whether they are organic or conventional, should not be subsidized in the long term 47 , unless it also provides additional services; e.g. the establishment of a composting facility in a city may play the double role of being an efficient and hygienic wastehandling facility and a provider of quality compost to periurban farmers. The Government can perhaps stimulate the emergence of the production of needed inputs through targeted interventions, e.g. support to the introduction of new technology in processing and support to a farmers group in establishing a composting facility. Governments should support the development of (including research and field-testing) useful inputs, e.g. biological controls. Farmers are easily tricked by marketers of various inputs and Government could support proper field testing of the products or other quality control measures, e.g. that the nutrient content of a sold fertilizer is indeed what is declared, or that they don’t contain dangerous levels of harmful substances such as heavy metals. Care must be taken though that such controls are not becoming overly complicated or expensive, as that would defeat their purpose. Another complication is that many countries handle organic inputs under an identical regulatory framework as their synthetic counterparts, e.g. biological pest control products have to be registered as pesticides with the same requirements and fees as for synthetic pesticides (TOS 2004, Envirocare 2006). Recommendation 29. Government (or others) should establish basic controls of biological inputs such as pest control agents and organic fertilizers. Regulations in importing countries are increasingly demanding that organic products be produced with organic seeds, even if there are some exceptions. A recent study in three African countries 48 shows that organic seeds are basically nonexistent in the formal sector. In the informal seed systems they are available, but then even if they are organic they are not certified as such. The study concludes that it is not at all realistic to demand the use of organic seeds in these countries at present (EPOPA 2006b). The use of treated seeds poses another obstacle. In many countries, seed treatments are prescribed by authorities or they are just used as a general measure. Treated seeds are only accepted in organic farming under exceptional conditions and the lack of untreated seeds can pose insurmountable problems for producers. There are many alternative seed treatments under development, e.g. warm 46 Some organic standards reject or severely limit the re-circulation of human waste, and in some cultures there is a strong resistance to their use. 47 Subsidies of inputs may lead to suboptimal outcomes (e.g. overuse of a certain input) and an economically unsustainable use. 48 United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia and Uganda. 33
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Annex 8. Options for organic market
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