Participatory Guarantee Systems In Spain: Building A System To Assess And Foster Agroecological Transition

Summary

There are many initiatives of short food supply chains in Spain that have been implementing participatory guarantee systems, with great involvement of producers and, in some cases, consumers. In this context, a research have been developed to systematize the criteria that ten Spanish PGS have developed, to assess conformity. Through the review of the documentation provided by the initiatives, we have analyzed the criteria that are shared among the experiences and how they are evaluated. We highlight the way these initiatives foster the agroecological transition by establishing criteria at different levels of obligation and periods for the different criteria to be adopted. To identify the differences between the agroecological framework these initiatives entail, and the definition of organic food that the European official regulation impose, we have generated a comparative table to highlight the main differences between both definitions.