1. Farmer Group Certification: -

Local Group is the main functional and decision-making body under Participatory Guarantee System. Local Group constitutes of more than five farmers in a group that live in the same village or close by villages and interact regularly with each other.
Participation of consumers or representatives of traders or retailers in the group and its functioning should be encouraged as it strengthens the integrity and trust.

2. Individual Farmer Certification

Under PGS, there is provision for registration of an individual farmer for availing of individual certificate in the first year and each farmer is free to market its own produce independent of group. But from the second year they have to join the existing PGS Local Group.

• Registration process similar to Group
• All activities directly monitored by RC itself

Reasons for introduction of Individual certified farmer in PGS are as follows:                               

• No PGS-India group nearby
• No other farmers at beginning interested to form PGS group
• Farmer devoid of area and away from others
• Regional Councils will assist such farmers in verification of their compliance to PGS-India guarantee process.
• Individual producer registration is an interim arrangement and the producer must initiate efforts to bring in other members from the village community to form the group in due course (maximum 2 years) and transform individual status to group status.

3. Large contiguous traditional / default organic areas to organic (Large Area Certification) under PGS-India

In India there are large and contiguous areas that are traditionally/ default organic with no history of prohibited input usage. Such area can be certified under this category.

Large area certification: Large contiguous traditional / default organic areas are areas consisting of few numbers of entire villages, it may include entire Taluk/District which is covered in under PGS-India certification system. It does not include wild forest areas, but if the villages covered under this certification process if it is having village level small forest area it can be included in LAC.
One village comprising of all the farmers will be treated as one group. To qualify for large area certification all the farming members of the village and the large area must comply to PGS-India organic standards.

Reference: https://pgsindia-ncof.gov.in