Organic farms certified by peers display higher product diversity

In Brazil, a study compared two systems of organic product certification implemented in São Paulo state. One system involves conventional certification by auditors accredited by the Ministry of Agriculture and the National Institute of Metrology, Quality and Technology (INMETRO). The other is peer-to-peer certification.

The study, reported in an article published in the journal Organic Agriculture, suggests that peer-to-peer certification adds the virtue of agrobiodiversity to organic farming in light of the significantly larger number of products offered by farms with this type of certification.

“This avoids reproducing in the organic context the tendency to prefer large-scale monoculture for the production of commodities,” said Tayrine Parreira Brito, first author of the article and a Ph.D. candidate at the State University of Campinas’s School of Agricultural Engineering (FEAGRI-UNICAMP).

Organic farming has expanded exponentially in many countries in recent decades. According to data collected by the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) and IFOAM—Organics International, the area planted with organic crops worldwide increased by over 53 million hectares between 2012 and 2022. This growth corresponds to more than twice the area of São Paulo state, which is 24,821,900 hectares.

Brazil ranks fourth worldwide in terms of organic acreage, with over 1 million hectares of organic crops. It is Latin America’s largest market for organic produce, estimated to have reached BRL 4 billion in retail sales in 2022. The number of organic farms in Brazil rose 448.63% to 26,622 between 2012 and 2021.

The market is sizable but, according to experts, however desirable the organic option may be from the standpoint of human health and to minimize the adverse environmental impacts of agriculture, it needs to be combined with other environmental and societal parameters.

An example of what Brito calls the “conventionalization of organic agriculture” is what is happening in Africa, where soybeans grown for export to the European Union account for 35% of total organic production.

“It’s an important source of hard currency for countries like Togo and others, but this ultra-specialization doesn’t directly help solve food problems for the local population, nor does it have a basis in the African continent’s traditional crops or cultures,” she said.

The Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) has boosted Brazilian organic diversity. “PGS is a peer-to-peer certification system that assesses production as a whole rather than just the output sold in the marketplace,” she said.

“Our comparison of PGS-certified units with units certified by third parties in São Paulo state showed that the former had 58.8 organic items per farm on average, while the latter had 22.2. This greater diversity includes a rich variety of crops, most of which are native and medicinal species. Native fruit trees such as jabuticaba, pitanga and uvaia, which aren’t significant on the conventional market, are sold at organic farmers’ markets during the fruiting season and are an extra source of income.”

Conventional certification by third parties applies to relatively few products, most of which are for export, whereas the PGS system is more holistic and inclusive, encouraging family farms to use more agroecological practices.

“This suggests that PGS can play a key role in avoiding the conventionalization of organic agriculture and ensuring it remains true to the original principles of sustainability and biodiversity,” Brito said.

From a practical standpoint, there is no conflict between PGS and third-party certification. Some farmers use both, placing two organic compliance seals on their products. Internationally speaking, however, Chile is the only country besides Brazil that accepts PGS certification.

“In Brazil and Chile, recognition of PGS and third-party certification is the same. Products can be sold via direct contact with consumers and indirectly via retailers, including supermarket chains. In other countries, such as Mexico and Costa Rica, recognition is confined to products sold directly to end-consumers,” Brito said.

The situation may change, but for the time being, farmers require certification by a universally recognized third party to sell organic produce to the EU, United States and elsewhere.

This does not stop some farmers from seeking ways to correct the course of their activity in order to avoid conventionalization. An example is a major organic coffee family farming co-op, whose leaders recently realized that ultra-specialized coffee growing was making members entirely dependent on the market to meet their minimal food needs.

“PGS has contributed significantly to avoidance of this kind of distortion. Its horizontal methodology creates a social network of solidarity that promotes inclusion and valorizes family farming, connecting producers and consumers, and reducing the distance between town and country,” said Vanilde de Souza-Esquerdo, a co-author of the article. She is a professor at FEAGRI-UNICAMP who acts as Brito’s thesis advisor and heads the institution’s Rural Extension and Agroecology Laboratory (LERA), which has been conducting research on PGS for over ten years.

“We have produced theses, dissertations and publications on PGS from different perspectives, making us one of the world’s leading research groups in the field,” she said.

For Souza-Esquerdo, an important aspect of PGS is the inclusion of social and behavioral criteria in its certification parameters. “For example, violence against women is inadmissible. Organic certification is denied to farms where this type of situation is found to occur,” she said.

The study was part of the research project “Limits, challenges and potential of the Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) in rural settlements in the state of São Paulo”, conducted by Brito with Souza-Esquerdo as principal investigator.