This article is written by Karen Mapusua, President of IFOAM – Organics International and first published on p.7-9 of the 200th issue of The Organic Standard.
The success of organic farming worldwide (reaching 99 million Ha of certified land in 2023, representing 2.1% of the world’s farmland and above 4.3 million producers) also means that many people’s profession is to deal with organic guarantee systems (OGS) (meaning organic standards and certification issues) on a daily basis.
With hundreds of organisations involved in organic certification and standard setting globally, thousands of certified smallholder groups (and their respective Internal Control System managers), and a bunch of international and local NGOs supporting the organic movement, it is safe to assume that the world counts tens of thousands of OGS professionals, sharing the same field of competence. The field is complex, however, due to the multitude of organic standards and regulations that apply to the various locations and markets. OGS issues are intertwined and highly dynamic, subject to regulatory changes that can often have tremendous livelihood and business impact.
Staying up to date with OGS developments is not only an imperative for professionals in the increasingly competitive field of organic certification services.
It is also a prerequisite for regulators, movement advocates and supporting NGOs, in order to enable them to develop effective strategies, take appropriate decisions to support organic farming, and find better ways to tackle the fraud problem and promote organic integrity.
OGS issues are intertwined and highly dynamic, subject to regulatory changes that can often have tremendous livelihood and business impact.
Yet despite this vital need for information flow amongst OGS professionals, there are very few established mechanisms for regular knowledge sharing. We at IFOAM-Organics International organise the Organic World Congress every 3 years, during which a number of OGS issues are discussed on a global level, but the frequency and outreach of the event certainly doesn’t suffice to cover the need for OGS information. Gunnar Rundgren, ex-IFOAM president, was a pioneer in identifying that need for a professional journal specifically made by and for OGS professionals, creating TOS in 2001. He ran TOS under his own consultancy firm, Grolink, until 2013.
IFOAM-Organics International regularly shares some OGS-related news through its general newsletter and communication channels but does not currently offer a dedicated platform for OGS professionals, where OGS developments can be covered more systematically and current topics can be explored in depth through long articles. We did run a newsletter called “The OGS Courrier” from 2010 to 2015 to inform our constituency of the rapid changes taking place in the period following the adoption of the new IFOAM OGS by the IFOAM General Assembly. In 2015, we started an official cooperation with TOS, acknowledging the immense value of TOS as the only international journal dedicated to OGS issues, made by and for OGS professionals. At that point, changes in the IFOAM OGS slowed down, and we also felt that we could use TOS to communicate also about IFOAM-related OGS news, without needing a specific IFOAM-centred OGS newsletter. Our cooperation followed, aiming at supporting TOS for its value much beyond the IFOAM OGS news.
IFOAM-Organics International also published for 10 years (2009-2019) the long appreciated “The Global PGS Newsletter”, a monthly (and in the last years bi-monthly) free newsletter dedicated to sharing information and updates on Participatory Guarantee Systems, during a period when they were still vastly unknown, misunderstood or undervalued. Having run this newsletter (with no assigned funding) for 10 years, we do appreciate how much work is involved in scanning the world for globally relevant news and getting busy professionals to share information in a timely manner, for the benefit of their peers. For lack of resources and seeing that PGS have become so widely known and accepted (even by several governments), and that they were explicitly included in the scope of the TOS journal, we decided after 2019 to stop The Global PGS Newsletter, and to encourage all PGS practitioners to both subscribe to TOS and to contribute to it through relevant PGS articles, thereby demonstrating once again the place that PGS have, alongside third party certification, in the World’s organic guarantee systems.
IFOAM-Organics International also published for 10 years (2009-2019) the long appreciated “The Global PGS Newsletter”, a monthly (and in the last years bi-monthly) free newsletter dedicated to sharing information and updates on Participatory Guarantee Systems.
Early subscribers of TOS will remember that, in the Grolink days, it used to come with the “Organic Certification Directory”, a TOS directory of all organic certification bodies worldwide, updated once a year. The team at Grolink did a tremendous work of compiling data annually from hundreds of CBs worldwide (peaking just below 500 CBs in 2013 when Grolink stopped the TOS Directory), including information for each of them on their number of clients, countries of operations and market approvals.
The value of this directory for the organic movement, in particular for operators in search of a certifier has been tremendous and IFOAM – Organics International decided to pick it up in 2020, to fill the void left since 2013. We decided to publish it as a real public good, accessible to all, free of charge, in the form of a searchable online database, available on the IFOAM-Organics International website.
We constantly battle to find the resources to conduct regular surveys to organic certifiers on one hand, and to PGS initiatives on the other, to update the information in these directories.
We call it the Organic Certifiers’ Directory. This comprehensive database of third-party certification bodies comes alongside our Global Map of PGS initiatives, which is the directory dedicated to Participatory Guarantee Systems. We constantly battle to find the resources to conduct regular surveys to organic certifiers on one hand, and to PGS initiatives on the other, to update the information in these directories. Nevertheless, we continue to believe that such service to the organic movement fall into the realm of what we, as an umbrella organisation should thrive to offer, because nobody else will.
We, on behalf of the organic movement, are immensely grateful to Gunnar Rundgren and his team, who created and ran TOS and the Organic Certifiers Directory, and then to Nuria Alonso and Jesus Conception, and finally now also to the team of the Alliance for Organic Integrity, for dedicating so much of their time to make sure that there remains a journal dedicated to OGS professionals, for our common benefit.
This is also a real public good for the organic movement, unique in its function, and one that IFOAM-Organics International wants to keep supporting for the years to come.
We also appeal to each OGS professional to contribute by suggesting/writing articles for TOS, on topics they become aware of, and which may have a global relevance.
Karen Mapusua is the President of IFOAM – Organics International and Director of the Land Resources Division at the Pacific Community (SPC). Based in Fiji, she supports agricultural development across 22 nations. With nearly 20 years of experience in rural development in the Pacific region, she co-founded the Pacific Organic & Ethical Trade Community (POETCom) and helped establish the Pacific Organic Guarantee Scheme.
