India: Conference approves regional organic standard for Asia

Source: thehimalayantimes.com

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KATHMANDU: Global Organic Market Access (GOMA) meeting has approved the Asian Regional Organic Standard (AROS).

The next step is for the AROS to be formally recognise it by governments in the region including Nepal. The working group issued a declaration at the conclusion of meeting calling for such recognition and recommending that the Standard be adopted as the common standard in South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as a regionally harmonised organic standard.

The Standard is equivalent to the Common Objectives and Requirements for Organic Standards, an international tool established through GOMA to ease organic trade. The working group consists of public and/or private-sector representatives from Bhutan, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, China, the Republic of Korea, Japan, Hong Kong (China), the Philippines, Cambodia, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

The GOMA Asia Working Group, which consists of government officials and farmers and other representatives of the region’s private sector in organic agriculture, has on February 12 approved the

the standard, developed over two years that covers organic crop production, processing and labeling.

The working group members have already initiated the ASEAN adoption process. AROS is on the agenda of the next Task Force on ASEAN Standards on Horticulture Produce meeting, set for April 24–26 in Hanoi that will send it to the ASEAN Working Group on Crops and then to the ASEAN senior officers meeting later this year.

Of an estimated two million certified organic farmers worldwide, some 80 per cent are in developing countries; 34 per cent in Africa; 29 per cent in Asia and 17 per cent in Latin America, according to the market access.

In addition, developing countries account for 73 per cent of land certified for organic wild collection and beekeeping. Countless other developing country farmers practice organic agriculture without being formally certified. “Organic agriculture relies on healthy soils and active agro-ecological management rather than on the use of inputs with adverse effects such as artificial pesticides and fertilisers,” it said, adding that it combines tradition, innovation and science.

Among the benefits of organic farming are higher incomes, more stable and nutritious diets, higher soil fertility, reduced soil erosion, better resilience to climate extremes like drought and heavy rainfall, greater resource efficiency, lower carbon footprints, less dependence on purchased external inputs and reduced rural-urban migration.

Ten years of a public-private effort to expand the range of places where developing-country farmers can sell their organic products has been reviewed at a February 13–14 conference in Nuremberg, Germany.

High-level officials and experts, including director of the UNCTAD Division on International Trade in Goods and Services, and Commodities Guillermo Valles discussed on progress made and practical means for further surmounting technical barriers to the marketing of organic products – a sector that already accounts for sales of $60 billion annually.

Organic production that is certified assures buyers that the product has been produced in accordance with organic standards. Certified organic products can fetch higher prices for farmers in developing countries — typically they earn from 15 to 150 per cent more than conventional products.

Increasingly, they can be traded internationally in robust markets. Minor differences in organic standards and certification requirements can hinder this trade.

Harmonisation and equivalence — that is, mutual recognition of different standards and conformity assessment systems — are a means of overcoming these differences so that markets for organic products continue to grow.

Tip: OrganicPortal India - Organic Agriculture

OrganicPortal NewsRoom

23.02.2012

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