Agriculture

Organic Produce must be first certified – Don

Published

3 years ago

July 17, 2021

A lecturer with the Federal College of Agriculture, Moor Plantation, IbadanDr Olufemi AyanfeOluwa, has stated that no agriculture produce should be termed organic except it is certified by the appropriate bodies.
AyanfeOluwa who said this during his online presentation on Organic Agriculture Standard and Certification, organised by Journalists Go Organic Movement, added, `if it is not certified, it may not be organic’.

He said that it is not sufficient to personally claim that one’s production is organic, but that there should be a link to benchmark reference regarding practices of Organic Agriculture.
“Standards could also be said to be a set of rules and regulations guiding any production, while Certification means an audit process to evaluate compliance to an established standard.

” Therefore, organic agriculture business is an organised system based on integrity and quality assurance.

” Organic standards’ are sets of definitions, requirements, recommendations and restrictions regarding the practices and materials that can be used within certified organic production and processing systems.

” These documented standards define the requirements that a producer/processor must meet before the certifying organisation will certify the enterprise ‘organic.”

AyanfeOluwa noted that Organic Agriculture Standard and Certification are important tools for Organic Agriculture business.

” We also have a standard in Nigeria “Organic Agriculture Standard in Nigeria” and anybody claiming to be practising organic agriculture without following any known standard is rather joking’’.

He enumerated the types of certification programmes available to farmers who may be interested in having their produce certified.
“We have individual or self-claimed called First Party Certification; Self claimed means that, the farm has not gone through audit process (certification) and it is only the farmer that could claim what he/she is doing is organic.

Thus, only close persons who could trust such a person would buy into his produce/products.
“Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) which is Second party: are quality assurance initiatives using their own written standards, often based on the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) Basic Standards.

” PGS are specific to individual communities, geographic areas, politics and their markets and the methods of verification that are used vary. Credibility is ensured through the participation of all stakeholders involved in production and consumption of organic products.“The word participatory means that both the producers and consumers are involved in the certification process.

“PGS which also shares a common goal with third party certification in providing a credible guarantee for consumers seeking organic produce locally, and is much cheaper and accessible.

” Thus, it makes it easier for organic farmers with small holdings which characterise agriculture in Africa to market their produce locally as organic, having access to certification through PGS.

“It should be noted that PGS certified products could only be sold within your country/region, but cannot be exported as organic, and this is one of the limitations of PGS’’.

He said Third Party Certification, (TPC) is in contrast to first party (self) certification and second party certification that are carried out by a body closely related to the supply chain.

“TPC is viewed as more reliable and credible than first and second-party certifications, because the credibility of the Third Party certifier itself is backed up by accreditation.

” Accreditation is either provided by private or public sector often by, or with the consent of, public authorities and requirements for accreditation are laid down in ISO 65 which is endorsed by the European Union as EN 45011.

” To export produce/products to any country, you must produce and be certified based on the standards of that country.

According to him, if you are targeting the US market, you must produce and be certified based on National Organic Programme (NOP).

” Such certification could only be handled by an independent accredited body which is a third party between the producer and the consumers in the targeted country.

” Third party certification could be very expensive and complex, and therefore makes it unaffordable for a small scale farmer.

” You require a large volume of production to be able to offset the cost of certification. Third party certification could be as costly as 5,000 pounds or more,” he said.

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Agriculture

NASC trains officers on digital seed certification, onboard pilot license seed inspectors

Published

4 months ago

December 13, 2023

The Gleamer

The National Agricultural Seeds Council (NASC)has improved the capacity of 25 newly engaged officers on digital seed certification using the National Seed tracker platform.
This is even as the Council has onboarded the licensed Seed Inspectors in some selected pilot states.

Giving his opening remarks at the two-day training workshop on digital seed certification, the Acting Director General, Dr. Ishiak Othman Khalid, said the council is committed to building the capacity of newly recruited certification and scientific office with deep interest in the digital seed certification appraisal system to ensure the system is at par with international best practices.

He said the Council is committed to ensuring that seed companies have the best-improved productivity, increased competitiveness for their seeds in the global seed space, and increased crop yield to compete in the international space.

“Our fundamental focus as a Council is on progressive strengthening and transforming of the practices of stakeholders in the seed value chain, such that the value creation at each level of the chain creates enough vested interest for all players to keep the system going.

“As part of our commitment to ensure national food security through agricultural sustainability and development of the seed industry in Nigeria, the Council has a world-class molecular diagnostic facility which can detect pathogens, variety identification using SSR markers, train purity testing, zygosity test, transgenic detection in GMOs among other tests using diagnostics tools.

The national Seeds tracker is an ICT solution to integrate supply chain functions and life seed systems to the Next Generation. Its vision is to organize seed production information, enable seed quality monitoring and certification, and empower every seed value chain actor to foster sustainable seed production for high productivity and profit.

Also, the Director, of Seed Certification and Quality Control, Ubandoma Mohammed, said the training aimed to enhance the capacity of the newly employed staff, so they would be able to fit effectively into the workings of the Council.

“WE are moving with time due to the technology of the time, we are training on digital seed certification using the national seed tracker. We have gone ICT and our report is partly being covered by our staff on the field using ICT. This training is not only for our staff, we are scaling it down to other stakeholders and the seed companies too.

“The training is very important because the President has declared a state of emergency on the food sector, therefore tasking the Ministry to ensure food availability. As we are speaking now the ministry has commenced distribution of inputs to farmers.

These inspectors are those that would go to the field to ensure that what is been planted are good and that they are seeds the farmers can use to get a good harvest.,” he said.

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