| Get Involved
- - - - - - -
- - - - - - -
- - - - - - -
- - - - - - -
- - - - - - -
- - - - - - -
- - - - - - -
- - - - - - -
- - - - - - -
- - - - - - -
|
|
|
|
|
Defending Group Organic Certification |
Print
|
E-mail
|
An Update:
On April 18th we notified our friends and supporters about this issue and in less than a week more than 3,150 individuals and 450 organizations signed on to a letter we helped to deliver in person to the USDA. This was a much, much more powerful response than we had dared hoped for and we thank all of you who took part.
On April 26th, a senior representative from Equal Exchange (Todd Caspersen, Director of Purchasing) traveled to Washington, DC, and together with representatives from the National Organic Coalition, the National Cooperative Grocers Association, and RAFI-USA, met with officials from the USDA (Mark Bradley, Program Manager of the National Organic Program, and his boss, Lloyd Day, Administrator of USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service) to express our concerns and present our letter with your signatures.
The USDA assured us that they had heard from us, and you, "loud and clear" and that in "two or three days" they would issue a statement that they thought would make us "happy".
We are now happy to report that the USDA has posted a statement that largely
responds to our concerns, those of our farmer partners, and those of
domestic organic activists, at least in the near term. This statement can be viewed at the
USDA website.
We will keep you posted of additional action/input needed by you as the Department proceeds to develop new regulations regarding small grower group certification in the coming year.
Words of Appreciation
This week we've received many emails from our producer partners directly affected by this ruling. Here's a sample of what the producers are saying, in their own words:
From CECOCAFEN in Nicaragua:
Brothers and Sisters,
In addition to signing on, we should all pass this letter around our organizations and to the producers. The more people who know about this issue, the more support we can lend to this initiative, so that the group certification system for small scale producers will be maintained. Cooperative organization, is a large family, of producer families…
Santiago Dolmus
From CEPICAFE in Peru:
Dear Felicia,
This letter is to send you greetings and at the same time to most deeply thank Equal Exchange for this initiative in defense of organic certification in which so many thousands of small-scale producers are involved. For this reason, once again on behalf of CEPICAFE, we wholeheartedly support this campaign.
p.s. We have already filled out the form on your website.
Hugs,
Jose Rojas Hernandez
General Manager
From ASPROCAFE, INGRUMA in Colombia
On behalf of Asprocafe Ingruma, we would like to send you our support for all the efforts you are making in favor of the small – scale producers. You can count on our signature.
Luz Marina Garcia
From CIRSA in Mexico
We were very surprised to hear about US government’s decision [to disallow group organic certification]. Honestly, it will mean a huge challenge that we as small-scale producers will now have to face; precisely because our philosophy as small-scale producers is to work together in groups in an organized and just manner.
Individual certification would truly place an obstacle on group processes, on our way of working with the grassroots, on all our efforts to strengthen our organization. A system in which many would be forced to start to work in an individual fashion and to sustain themselves in this way would change our entire way of working.
We do not agree with these decisions or with the bias of the National Organic Program, which appears to lean towards strengthening the big farmers, the big estate and plantation owners and would only serve to make us, cooperatives of small scale producers, to make our lives more difficult and costly.
We wholeheartedly support Equal Exchange’s letter to NOP opposing this decision; we must add to and join more forces from the grassroots, from the organized communities to make the system work and to resist all these types of challenges, especially given the circumstances and governmental policies which currently prevail in your country and that each day are turning more and more into cumbersome and complicated decisions and laws.
… from the southeast of Mexico, the indigenous and marginalized communities of Chiapas, we send cordial greetings to the Equal Exchange team. May God continue to give us strength in our struggle.
Filiberto M.
Background Info
Equal Exchange Stands with Small Farmers and their Co-ops
Many of our friends have heard the news about the USDA's National Organic Program ruling that appears to indicate an end to group organic certification of small farmer co-operatives. This is of course a concern for Equal Exchange because the core of our mission is partnering with small family farmers and supporting their organizations. Group organic certification has been key to our success - and the success of our farmer partners - over the years. In particular, it has made organic certification accessible to poor farmers in the developing world who would otherwise be unable to afford it.
But group certification is also crucial to the organic movement as a whole:
- Group certification makes access to the organic market possible for poor farmers and their families, improving their incomes and protecting their communities, farm workers and the environment from harmful agricultural chemicals. Ending group certification would devastate these communities, making certification for individual farmers prohibitively expensive and resulting in increased rural poverty and migration, and a return to less sustainable, chemical-dependent farming. Farmers' co-ops that have spend years developing organic programs to help them access the US marketplace would see all of this work go to waste;
- Group certification is central to the growing organic food industry in our own country. As demand for organic products such as organic coffee, tea, cocoa and sugar continues to grow dramatically, the process enables buyers to access quality organic food grown by family farmers around the world. Ending group certification would cut off supply chains for hundreds of businesses that depend on co-operatives for their organic products, and increase prices for others. Particularly affected would be organizations - such as Equal Exchange - that are committed to Fair Trade as a model for empowering small farmers and their co-ops;
- And of course, group certification also provides US consumers with delicious, nutritious organic foods grown with care by family farmers.
Without group certification, consumers will be left with fewer choices as the supply of these products declines dramatically, raising retail prices and leaving only large farms and plantations in the organic system.
We at Equal Exchange believe in the original goals of the organic movement:
creating a credible system that helps protect the environment, support family farmers and farm workers, and provides consumers with healthy, safe and nutritious food. A certification system that supports this effort must also have integrity. We believe that group organic certification has been very effective to date, and should be formalized and improved upon, rather than discarded.
We are therefore joining with other organizations - farmers, consumers, NGOs and the business community - in calling on the USDA to delay this ruling and instead focus on making group certification work better.
To learn more about this issue, we recommend the links below:
http://www.foodfirst.org/node/1675
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/501659372?ltl=1176170421
|
|
|
|
Get Involved 
