Training cum awareness programme on organic seed certification system/participatory guarantee system
Organic producers across globe have been developing methods for guaranteeing the organic status of their product to consumers, processors, traders and increasingly also to governmental agencies in charge of food quality. In North Eastern Hilly Region, except Sikkim, there is neither subsidy for organic cultivators nor incentives to practice organic cultivation. It is high time to ensure and classify the tribal agricultural practices prevailing in this region as organic. If this is achieved, the poor farmers will get a substantial premium price to compensate their low yields. This seems to go a long way in alleviating poverty and raising the living standards of the resource poor hill inhabitants. Therefore, farmers of Meghalaya need certification for their organic products and its production processes as it is necessary to ensure that a consumer is not duped and a genuine organic farmer is not put to distress. To make farmers aware of the certification process a training cum awareness programme on organic seed certification system/participatory guarantee system was organized on 2nd August, 2018 at Pynthor in which 70 number of selected farmers from Pynthor, Mynsain and Umden Umbathiang villages were attended the programme.
Dr Jayanta Layek (Scientist, Agronomy) highlighted the basic understanding of Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) with a quality assurance initiative in which organic farmers can have full control over the certification process. It aims to convert real producers into entrepreneurs and puts an effort to make organic certification affordable and encashable to farmers. Dr Utpal Dey emphasised that the simple procedures of this system . Firstly, farmers must provide documents that are basic and essential even in local language so that it can be easily understandable for the farmers. Secondly, all the members of the system must be local and must known to each other. Being themselves are real organic farmers, they can have high degree of understanding on day to- day knowledge or acquaintance of the farm. Thirdly, as peer appraisers are among the group and reside in the same village, they have better access to surveillance. He also explained that under the PGS system every farmer is offered with an individual certificate and each farmer is free to market its own produce independently. Ms Daphibanri Lyngdoh drawn the attention on how farmers can benefit from the Participatory Guarantee System (PGS). The basic benefit of the PGS is (i) to help small and marginal farmers to easily get access to organic certification (ii) to act as cost effective, hassle-free and farmer friendly practice (iii) to ideally help in increasing the domestic demand for organic produce.
Dr Jayanta Layek, concluded the programme by reviewing some of the organic standards that are to be followed by the farmers under the PGS which are enlisted like (i) Farmers should not undertake any usage of synthetic pesticides such as insecticides, herbicides, fungicides and any fertilizers or chemically treated or genetically modified seeds (ii) They have to work with fellow farmers and attend meetings to expand and share required knowledge of the standards and organic production techniques among themselves (iii) Farmers must work to maintain the soil through ecologically sustainable farming practices such as crop rotations, composting, cover crops and green manures (iv) They have to care for their livestock in ways that ensure their well-being (v) They have to use bags and containers that are clean and clearly labelled ‘organic only’ to harvest, transport and sell our organic products (vi) They have to ensure that on the farm during storage, processing, transport and sale there should be no contamination or mixing of organically grown with non-organically grown produce.
