Best Practices for Organic Policy - What developing country - UNEP

Best Practices for Organic Policy
the biggest challenges since the late 1990s. During the past seven years, however, there has been a
more active involvement from the public sector, as well as more openness to develop alliances among
the different sectors involved, which has brought about a considerably stronger organic movement, in
which the Government is one of the actors along with the other stakeholders.
Regulation, standards and conformity assessment
The national organic guarantee system is managed by the Technical Office for Accreditation and
Registry of Organic Agriculture (GTARAO). The main functions performed by GTARAO are: (a)
accrediting the certification bodies; (b) keeping a registry of certification bodies, inspectors, certified
farmers, processors and others; and (c) supervising and auditing the whole system. To do this,
GTARAO bases its work on the national legislation included in the following laws and regulations:
Environmental Law No. 7554 of 1995; Phytosanitary Protection Law No. 7664 of 1997 and its
Regulation; and the national standards for organic production contained in the Organic Agriculture
Regulation Decree No. 29782 of 2001 56 . Compliance with ISO 65 procedures is required for
accreditation.
Costa Rica was included in the “third country list” of the European Union in March 2003. It is
approved by Switzerland for organic imports. The processes for equivalency recognition from the
United States and Japan have been initiated.
Currently, there are two national certification bodies (EcoLogica and AIMCOPOP) and four
international ones (BCS Oko Garantie, OCIA, Ecocert and SKAL) accredited by GTARAO.
Certification bodies have to comply with the national standards as a baseline but are also allowed to
certify to more stringent standards. Considering the number of clients, EcoLogica is the main
certification body, controlling around 65 per cent of the clients. EcoLogica and BCS are the only ones
accredited by the Government for EU export purposes and all of them, except AIMCOPOP, have
obtained the United States’ NOP accreditation. A national seal to back up all nationally accredited
certification has been developed by GTARAO and it may be used by farmers and exporters, at no
charge. It is not yet widely recognized.
For the domestic market, certification in compliance with the national standards is mandatory and can
be performed by any of the accredited certification bodies. In Costa Rica, most certification of small
and medium-scale organized farmers is organized through group certification 57 . This is about the only
feasible option for small farmers in terms of costs but, even so, this is not always a “low-cost” option,
since many indirect costs, such as training and management of the internal control system, are added
to the direct costs, which are often too high, especially if the group is small. As an example of direct
costs, if EcoLogica certifies a group of 1,000 farmers, each one will have to pay approximately
US$ 10, but if the group consists of only 10 farmers, each one will pay approximately US$ 150 and,
in addition, both groups would have to pay 0.25 per cent of the gross farm sales per year.
Other options, such as participatory guarantee systems, are currently being developed by a committee
involving members of MAOCO and farmers in a couple of regions.
Agriculture policy
General
Pesticides have been taxed in Costa Rica for many years, and the income from these taxes supports a
large portion of the Ministry of Agriculture’s budget for Phytosanitary Protection Direction. With
regards to GMOs, national policies are rather cautious and express some concern about the possible
adverse impacts on biodiversity, the environment and health. In practice, though, the mechanisms for
the development of GMO-related activities (research, environmental liberation, seed production,
56 This decree modifies No. 25834 of 1997 and 29067 of 2000.
57 Where farmers are organized in groups with internal control systems.
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