MANILA, Philippines - The Philippines looks forward to greater market access to Asia for its organic produce through a harmonization of standards that will remove trade barriers in the region.
Through the Global Organic Market Access (GOMA) project of the United Nations-Food and Agriculture Organization (UN-FAO), Asian countries are now drafting the standards.
Also leading the drafting of the regional organic standards are the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movement (IFOAM) and the UN Conference on Trade and Development.
"Hopefully the standards will be launched during the Organic World Congress in Korea late September to October this year," said Pablito M. Villegas, IFOAM international network lead convenor, said in an interview.
The Philippines will also send its representatives to a Laos meeting this June for the draft. Policymakers for the organic standards in the country are headed by Department of Agriculture (DA)-Bureau of Agriculture and Fisheries Products Standard Executive Director Gilbert Layese.
The UN-FAO supports harmonization of standards for organic food as it claims that "organic agriculture and trade afford the world a high level of agro-ecosystem services, and present social and economic opportunities for people, especially those in need of food security and ways out of poverty."
Certification of farms as one that is totally free from the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers is one of the major concerns in the marketing of organic food.
This will involve an agreement on equivalency on the use of materials for fertilizers and biopesticides. An agreement, for instance, includes acceptance of local plants - madre de cacao or kakawate - as substitute for India's neem tree as a material for fertilizer or biopesticides.
"This will pass through governmental channel. Then it will be recognized as a multilateral agreement. We will then also agree with other regions on a similar standards such as South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation or SAARC," said Villegas.
The PHilippines is pushing for recognition of a first party and second party certification for organic farming, rather than just a third party certification which is more costly and complicated. A first party certification comes from a claim from the owner that his farm grows organically and a second party certification comes from a recognized organic farm owner that affirms as to the truthfulness of such claim.
Villegas said the second party certification is also recognized by the IFOAM and is an effective organic guarantee system much like a self-policing industry.
While US and Europe are among the biggest markets for organic produce, Japan has been a nearby market for organic food. In the US, the USDA reported that its organic agriculture imports accounted for 12 to 18 percent of the $8.6 billion organic retail sales as of 2002.
With the increasing vibrancy of the local organic industry as the Organic Agriculture Act was passed last year, Villegas related a financing window for organic farming has been opened by the Development Bank of the Philippines. Its loan program finances organic rice, muscovado sugar, vegetables, processed organic vegetables such as pickels and chunks, seaweeds, fruits, root crops, culinary herbs, poultry meat and eggs, processed pork meat, beverages, and honey
