Where does the buck stop?

‘Passing the buck’ is an English expression. It means letting someone else take care of a problem or take on the responsibility. The former US President Truman famously had a sign on his desk saying that ”the buck stops here”. Clarifying that he was ultimately in charge.

Who is really in charge? Who is to blame? These are questions that come into mind when reading the European Court of Auditor’s report on the EU organic system. Some of their conclusions could have been drawn directly from earlier leaders of The Organic Standard...

The EU system is built on competing national certification bodies – in some countries up to thirty certification bodies – with oversight by a plethora of national and sometimes regional authorities, accreditation by national accreditors ( only one per country because they have been granted monopoly by the European Union) and oversight by the European Commission. The system has developed not based on the needs of the sector but on the needs and habits of the governments. That is the only reason why authority for approval of certification bodies follows the divisions of the governments. And it is why in some countries regional authorities are in charge and in most countries several authorities are in charge.

Because of an, unfortunate, reference to the EN 45011 (ISO 65) in the EU Regulation back in 1997, national accreditation bodies came into the game, bringing little added value, but increasing cost and increasing focus on rather unimportant procedures. As they were given a monopoly of accreditation, they also swayed the EU that they should have the monopoly of interpreting the EN 45011, a rather outrageous claim.

All of the actors in the system have resource constraints, and will only do what they are forced to do. Most of them also lack competency. Some of the authorities are even hostile to the organic sector despite it being within their mandate to supervise and approve the certification bodies. How does that make the certification bodies and producers feel? The EU has rarely conducted any supervision of what the Member States do. And the ‘transaction costs’ of keeping all in the systems up to date and informed are astronomical. But the biggest problem is that nobody takes responsibility. A concerned consumer in an EU country or a food processor that suspects you’re a competitor is cheating, has nowhere to go with a query because nobody is in charge.

This mess is likely to lead to calls for more controls and more supervision, probably by strengthening the Commissions oversight, and increased reporting upwards by all concerned. But that is the wrong way to go.

What the system needs is rationalisation and fewer actors. There are several options for this. By integrating organic controls into the normal food control system, like in Denmark, both certification and accreditation can be eliminated, and accountability is clear. The same can be accomplished by having a national monopoly for certification, like in the Netherlands. By recognising one international accreditation system for all certification bodies, such as the IOAS, certification bodies could operate freely within all the European territories. In any case, the national approvals of certification bodies are antiquated and could be abolished; a certification body is approved in one country it should be allowed to operate freely in the other countries.

This is not the place to make the blueprint for a new system, but any new system should be built on fewer actors and fewer layers and clearer lines of responsibility, and as much as possible responsibility should be at the ‘lower’ levels, i.e. with the producers and the certification bodies.

What's in a name?

At the latest European organic conference in Rome delegates discussed what should be part of the EU organic Regulation and what should not. Organic food has been in fashion for a while and some organic standard-setters, certification bodies and companies have rushed to expand the use of the term ‘organic’ into other sectors. Most prominently the term is often used for textiles and cosmetics, but also in water, salt, fisheries, forestry, building sectors, –in fact you name it and it is probably there. Parallel to this there is also the inclusion of many new aspects associated with the organic sector, e.g. its effect on climate change, biodiversity and social conditions. The term ‘Organic’ is thus moving further and further away from the ‘no chemical fertilisers, no pesticides’ market claim that it was in many countries.

Both developments are somewhat problematic. To what extent they really respond to market needs is not clear, nor is it clear whether the drive is mainly by a self-interested certification industry, or by people who like to tell other people what to do. If one sees the term as a ‘brand’ there are many reasons to question the wisdom of stretching the use of this successful brand into new areas. Normally, that leads to erosion of its image. Of course ‘organic’ is not a normal brand and does not necessarily follow the normal rules, but still there is most certainly a risk in expanding its use to cover things far from its agricultural origins. The organic sector is also not credible, or competent, as a rule maker for production categories that fall largely outside agriculture. It makes more sense that associations of craftsmen, builders or architects discuss eco-building rather than farmers and supermarkets; and that weavers, spinners and apparel makers develop textile standards. The inherent ‘values’ of ‘organic’ might not translate easily to other product segments. The same consumer that wants the t-shirt to be made with organic cotton, may simultaneously go for high-tech outdoor stuff, made by plastic and possibly with nano-particles.

The inclusion of more aspects of production in organic standards is to some extent the opposite, it is about ‘deepening’ the organic idea and proposition. Very often the rules of those ‘new’ subjects are not sensitive enough for the contradictions that may occur, and there may be trade-offs. For example, air freight of one product may mean an improvement of the livelihood of a community; or limiting green house gas emissions from agriculture may sometimes conflict with bio-diversity or animal welfare. Each new subject carries with it new values and subjective judgments. One can influence both organic producers and consumers and change values, some of them quite rapidly, in society, but it still goes that the more things added, fewer people will feel comfortable with the whole package.

The fundamental problem is perhaps the combination of a ‘do good’ system, which organic systems most definitively are, with an institution that does not have ‘do good’ as its main principle, rather the opposite – the market. Markets are driven by profits, a fundamental tenet of the market system we humans have created. Is it really realistic to expect an institution that was never intended to do good or to be fair to be that? If we look at it like that many of the inherent conflicts in the organic movement become more understandable. Organic as a concept, illustrated by the four principles of organic as developed by IFOAM, is not market-oriented at all. On the contrary, it clearly adheres to principles that go far beyond, or above, sometimes also against, the market. But the ‘organic market’ is clearly market-oriented, those that are in that market will not survive long unless they are market-oriented. It is because of the market, competition and communication with the consumers that we formulated organic standards and have certification systems. Many don’t accept this perspective but believe that the standards are – or should be - an expression of organic principles. A third group, perhaps, sees the whole idea of organic standards as an abomination; using standards to define organic methods is like using a plough for no-till farming. It is not so much about right or wrong here. Still it is quite obvious that the majority of the certified organic farmers follow the details of organic standards because they want to market their products as organic, and that organic standards, as they are written today, are written with that use very much in mind. The people developing standards should have these issues more often in mind. The itch or urge to write more rules should perhaps sometimes find sublimation in some other way?

The text above is the leader of the coming issue of The Organic Standard, the special journal for organic standards, certification and regulation which Grolink publishes and of which I am the acting "publisher"

Save organic from over-regulation

Just came back from Japan.

Organic agriculture as a concept is not at all new in Japan; Japan actually has contributed a lot to the global development of the organic sector. An early pioneer was Mokichi Okada who established nature farming field experiments in Japan 1935. He was later followed e.g. by Masanobu Fukuoka who promoted a kind of organic farming which was mimicking nature as much as possible. The so called Effective Microorganisms (EM) also originate from Japan. A special way of compost making, bokashi, is also a Japanese contribution to organic farming, which has spread far beyond Japan.

The figures for certified organic farming are not very impressive. In 2008/2009, 8,595 hectares were certified of which rice paddy constituted 2,810 hectares; annual crops 4,416; perennial crops 998 ha and pasture 362 hectares respectively. This corresponds to just 0.19 percent of the total arable land. The number of certified farmers is just above 3800. supervision and enforcement.

In contrast to these very modest figures, 4.7% of the farmers claim, in a survey from 2007, that they are already doing organic farming. Some estimate that the number of organic farmers outside the JAS system amounts to the double of those within the system while the member of Parliament Mr Tsurunen told me that he believes there are seven times as many, which would correspond better with the claims by the farmers. Many sources state that a considerable proportion of those that are claimed to be organic are not really following the standard, e.g. they might rotate organic crops in an otherwise non-organic crop rotation, or they might indeed use some chemical fertilizer. Regardless which figure is the correct one it is clear that third-party certification and government regulation has not unified the Japanese organic sector, rather the opposite, and that there is at least as many serious organic farmers outside the system as within.

“Until the latter half of the 1990s when the WTO regime was established they (the Government) rushed to set up rather low quality organic standards based on the Codex Guidelines and a very strict accreditation system (the revised JAS law). In doing so, they robbed the terminology ‘organic agriculture’ from the private sector, which had been taking into account the farming conditions in Japan. Since the implementation of the revised JAS law, the share of domestically produced ‘organic agricultural products’ distributed in Japan has lowered disastrously. In the meantime, those participating in Teikei and self-sufficient methods continue to work outside the market distribution framework, choosing not to use the organic JAS label.” says Katsu Murayama, an organic pioneer.

There is a fairly large number of organic farmers also in Europe and the USA that have stayed outside or quit the regulatory systems of certification. It is scandalous that those are deprived from the right to define themselves and their producs as organic by zealous (or perhaps just incompentent?) regulators. But--- in all fairness, to a large extent the sector itself is to blame for calling in the governments in the first place.

Why should organic be regulated but not Fair Trade?

In the "COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE, contributing to Sustainable Development: The role of Fair Trade and nongovernmental trade-related sustainability assurance schemes" from EU Commission of 5 May, the commission "Reiterates the importance of maintaining the non-governmental nature of Fair Trade and other similar sustainability schemes throughout the EU. Public regulation could interfere with the workings of dynamic private schemes." I could not agree more. The EU has had a similar approach to environmental labelling, where it does run an own scheme, but it has not regulated or banned other environmental labelling schemes.

BUT it is very hard to see the logic why the EU thinks that organic labelling needs regulation. Fair trade labelling, eco labelling and organic are all sustainability labelling schemes and the arguments for staying out of regulation are the same for all of them. When the commission says:
"Regulating criteria and standards would limit a dynamic element of private initiatives in this field and could stand in the way of the further development of Fair Trade and other private schemes and their standards." this is equally true for the organic sector.

There will be scandals and fraud without a regulation - but they are there also with a regulation...