Organic market not a fad

Fads have a limited life-span, but the organic goods survived the trend. Instead of following the typical boom-to-bust cycle, organic produce has been elevated to a lifestyle choice as people become carbon-footprint conscious. Unfortunately, with the rise in popularity of organic living, "greenwashing" has become rampant and words like green, organic, recycled, eco-friendly and natural are used by some marketers to mislead consumers about companies' practices.

11 Oct 2011

Authentic organic products go through a strenuous process before they are approved as organic and Africa's Farms Certified Organic (Afrisco) is an accredited South African certifier of organic produce, sharing the market with 11 foreign certifiers, all of whom are operating in South Africa. In South Africa there is no legislation that controls organic production and making sure that all products claiming to be organic are certified is idealistic, but, says Afrisco managing director Diana Callear, there is one exception - products linked to the Participatory Guarantee Scheme (PGS).

PGS is a government initiative aiming to get small-scale farmers who can't afford certification access into the organic market. "They are organic by the nature in which they farm, [t]hey don't have the resources and end up being organic by default, (even though) they're not certified," says Callear

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