Organic Certification

Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) is a quality assurance initiative that is locally relevant, emphasize the participation of stakeholders, including producers and consumers and operate outside the frame work of third party certification. As per IFOAM (2008) definition "Participatory Guarantee Systems are locally focused quality assurance systems. They certify producers based on active participation of stakeholders and are built on a foundation of trust, social networks and knowledge exchange”. PGS is a process in which people in similar situations (in this case small holder producers) assess, inspect and verify the production practices of each other and take decision on organic certification (PGS-Green and PGS Organic ).

Certificate of Authorization

KVM is authorized Regional Council for providing organic certification under Participatory Guarantee System in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh

In PGS organic farmers have full control over the certification process and are able to produce far more credible and effective system of quality assurance compared to third party certification. Important benefits of this system over third party certification system are as follows:

1. The procedures are simple; documents are basic and use the local languageunderstandable to farmers.
2. All the members are local and known to each other. Being themselves practicing organic farmers have high degree of understanding on day-to-day knowledge or acquaintance of the farm.
3. Peer appraisers are among the group and live in the same village, therefore have betteraccess to surveillance
4. Peer appraisal instead of third party inspections reduces cost
5. Mutual recognition and support between Regional PGS groups ensures better networking for processing and marketing.
6. Empowers farmers with increased capacity building
7. Bring consumers to the farm without the need of middleman
8. Unlike grower group certification system, PGS offer every farmer with individual certificate and each farmer is free to market its own produce independent of group.
9. Consumers and buyers are often involved in production and verification process
10. Random residue testing at regular intervals ensures the integrity and increases thetrust.