Intervention in a third party smallholder group organic certification

Summary

The present paper approaches the perspectives of certification for the organic family farmer agriculture, through alternative certification processes, the participatory certification, and the third party smallholder group certification. The main goal of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding about the potential of the alternative organic certification processes. To assess so far as the certification can be associated to a pedagogical process for the Paulista family farmers in which the possibility of strengthening the social control can lead to a bureaucratic process reduction in the Internal Control System – ICS. The specific goal is to verify if the APROVE’s small holder group certification proposed by the certifier AAOcert based on the IFOAM Basic Standards opens possibilities of building more participatory processes for the producers. The paper is led by the following question: is it possible to a certification system recognized internationally, as the third party small holder group certification, to build a more effective participation from the producer, without losing the quality demanded by its processes? The central hypothesis is that the group certification is the best immediate strategy for the organic family farmers from São Paulo State, since the IFOAM basic standards opens perspectives for more participatory processes and with social control and at the same time the best fit to the pedagogical process feature to be introduced with the producers with third party certification today. The research was achieved in three moments, however, the last one with an intervention with the introduction of an IFOAM basic standard to test the hypothesis. The results of the research proved that the IFOAM basic standards introduction allowed more participatory and social control processes and at the same time pedagogically suitable to the group. So, it is advisable for the public policy makers who work in the family farmer agriculture inclusion in the organic agriculture take into account the IFOAM basic standards.