ORGANIC CERTIFICATION
Organic farming has emerged as an important priority area globally in view of the growing demand for safe and healthy food and long term sustainability and concerns on environmental pollution associated with indiscriminate use of agrochemicals. Organic certification provides a guarantee throughout all of the supply and consumption chain, allowing businesses to highlight their ethical practices. It ensures complete traceability, a transparency that meets consumer expectations, as well as higher wages for farmers and processors. Today, the demand for the certification of products is ever increasing. Certification will highlight ethical production and processing practices; beyond contributing to the enhancement of water and soil quality. Organic agriculture also helps to increase biodiversity and save energy, all the while producing wholesome, healthy products.
Certification creates real opportunity for organic farming communities; it’s a way to highlight the ethical practices, to receive better (premium) prices for their products, to have access to all markets and to support local economies. Finally, it’s also a way to protect farmers by providing them with a certification label that is well-known and sought after by importers and market directors. Organic certification would cater to the demand for organic food with assured quality of food products. It will help to strictly facilitate the sale of organic products to consumers and also provide ownership value to the certified provider of the organic products. Certification is essentially aimed at regulating and facilitating the sale of organic products to consumers as per National Standards for Organic Production (NSOP).
The Government of Meghalaya notified Bio-Resources Development Centre (BRDC) as the Organic Certifying Agency (OCA) of the State as per Notification no. PLR.15/2020/4 Dated Shillong the 27th February 2020. In pursuance to this, the Centre has registered under Participatory Guarantee System of India (PGS-INDIA) for which it was authorized as the Regional Council by the National Executive Commission (NEC), Department of Agriculture, Cooperation & Farmers Welfare under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of India as per notification Ref. No. 10(6) / 2019/NCOF/Cert-PGS/165, Dated 19th January 2021 with the Registration number 4619. The Centre is also in the process of applying for accreditation as certification body for NPOP third party certification under Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India.
- PARTICIPATORY GUARANTEE SYSTEM OF INDIA (PGS-India)
Participatory Guarantee System of India (PGS-India) is a quality assurance initiative that is locally relevant, emphasizing the participation of stakeholders, including producers and consumers and operates outside the frame of third-party certification. As per IFOAM (2008) definition "Participatory Guarantee Systems are locally focused quality assurance systems. They certify producers based on active participation of stakeholders and are built on a foundation of trust, social networks and knowledge exchange”. In the case of organic agriculture, PGS is a process in which people in similar situations (in this case producers) assess, inspect and verify the production practices of each other and collectively declare the entire holding of the group as organic.
The certification process under PGS-India will help the farmers of the state in obtaining organic certificate for their land and produce from such certified land at a much reduced costs without the involvement of an agency for the necessary verification process involved therein. Thus it is farmers’ friendly as compared to NPOP third party certification and with the help of the certificate it will help vouch the farmers for their organic farming practices and will boost up the organic products trade within the country.
Post authorization as an RC, the Centre had participated in the various online training/awareness program organized by PGS-India Secretariat. The details are as follow:
- Demonstration of 2nd version of PGS-India web portal operations conducted by PGS-India Secretariat on 19th April 2021.
- Inauguration of 2nd version of PGS-India web portal held on 3rd May 2021.
- Online Demo to RC on mini rapid residue testing kit held on 20th, May 2021(Technology developed by NDRI, Karnal).
- Two days online awareness programme entitle “Organic Farming, PGS –INDIA certification, web portals operations and Marketing” held on 17th and 18th, June, 2021.
- Two day online training program on PGS-India Certification held on 27th and 28th December 2021.
The Centre had also conducted various awareness programs to sensitize the people of the state on the importance of obtaining organic certification. These are done in collaboration with partnering institutions viz., Department of Agriculture, Meghalaya State Rural Livelihoods Society (MSRLS) etc.