Small organic farmers foiled by red tape

A National Draft Policy for Organic Production is in formulation. A consultation phase with stakeholders has been concluded and is being reviewed by departmental clusters in the government.

Konrad Hauptfleisch, spokesman for the South African Organic Sector Organisation and owner of the Bryanston Organic Market, said the industry was hoping the policy would be presented to parliament's portfolio committee by early next year.

He said a stumbling block, especially for small-scale emerging farmers, was the excessive cost of certification.

"Certification is a very necessary thing in organic agriculture to ensure the integrity of the products, but it has become nearly an industry in itself. Certification agencies have very high costs, so it means that if you want to farm organically you have to have a huge administrative infrastructure to support your certification. You pay between R10000 and R20000 a year to certify your product organic, and for small farmers that is not attainable," he said.

But the industry has devised a way around this by adapting an international participatory guarantee system (PGS).

Professor Raymond Auerbach of the School of Natural Resource Management at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University said PGS was a non-formal way of certification whereby a co-op or group of farmers could be certified under one certificate, provided they have an internal qualitymanagement system.

Brazil and India are beginning to recognise this type of certification as law, he said. Commercial organic retailers such as Woolworths and Pick n Pay use third-party certifiers, who use global certification standards, mostly from the European Union.

Apart from the certification issue, the organic sector is not covered by specific government legislative standards beyond the Consumer Protection Act and the Advertising Standards Authority.

Hauptfleisch admitted that regulation was "still a grey area".

"We are currently working with the SA Bureau of Standards to develop a private standard in consultation with the government and the industry."

The relatively high price of organic produce was justifiable, said Hauptfleisch.

"What drives the price is demand and supply, and at the moment the demand for fresh produce is way more than supply, which means that it's a seller's market. Also, organic products are seen to be niche products offered to a niche market, that is generally the higher-income group, and so people add a premium.

"Another reason is that a lot of the processed organic products are imported and we are paying a huge premium for those."

Auerbach said organic foods contained higher levels of antioxidants, vitamin A and C and unsaturated fats.

"Organic agriculture offers a real alternative to the way that we produce our food, the way we mitigate and adapt to climate change, and it is a more sustainable way of operation, because an organic farmer is not dependent on fossil-fuel inputs such as expensive fertilisers and pesticides.

"There has been a lack of government support for organic farmer training, and the bureaucratic obstacles that they have put in the way of trainers have also been quite awful. Yes, the policy is there and it's a great step forward, and we are hopeful that it will result in support for the smallscale organic farmers."

Source: Business Times