GOMA approves Asian organic standard for increased market access

Global Organic Market Access (GOMA) meeting has approved the Asian Regional Organic Standard (AROS).
The next step is for the Asian Regional Organic Standard to be recognised formally 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, Viet Nam, 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 day before yesterday approved 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 fertilizers," 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 two day conference — yesterday and today — 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.
Deputy director-general of the WTO Harsha Singh; assistant director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) Alexander Mueller; and deputy secretary of the Department of Agriculture of the USA Kathleen Merrigan also addressed the meeting.Co-sponsored by BioFach, the world’s largest organic trade show and conference took place just before the 2012 BioFach is held in Nuremberg. A partnership to promote global organic market access was established at a February 2002 conference of UNCTAD, FAO and the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), the international umbrella organisation for the organic sector.From 2003 to 2008, the three organisations convened the International Task Force on Harmonisation and Equivalence in Organic Agriculture (ITF) – a platform for dialogue between public and private institutions involved in organic trade and regulation.
The Task Force conducted in-depth analyses and developed recommendations and practical tools to ease the international flow of organic goods. The partners’ collaboration to further develop and promote uptake of International Task Force outcomes has helped to change mindsets and the landscape of international organic trade.
The EU references the Task Force’s tools and incorporates the principle of equivalency into its new system for approving organic imports. That makes it more likely that organic produce from developing countries will be accepted for import into the EU. And it makes it easier for organic production to be tailored to local agro-ecological and socio-economic conditions.
Similarly, IFOAM, the international organic private-sector standard-setter, now focuses on building a family of standards that meet key common objectives of organic systems, but with space for local adaptation.
The US and the EU have each signed organic equivalency agreements with Canada and will reportedly announce another agreement soon. Together the three markets account for 95 per cent of global certified organic sales, sourced worldwide. The US-Canada agreement particularly benefits developing countries because it includes acceptance of organic goods from third parties – that is, if such imported produce is recognised as organic by one country it can be sold as organic in both.
There is a major trend towards developing and applying regional organic standards. Such efforts are under way in East Africa, the Pacific, Central America, and South and South-East Asia. Farmers meeting regional standards are able to sell their produce in other countries in the region.