Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
the certification and inspection fees he was quoted in the year 2000: over
200,000 rupees per year as an individual farmer. A fee equaling nearly
$4,000, just to be able to export organic foodstuffs abroad, was too high
for him to pay on an annual basis.
Other international agencies had similar pricing schemes; according
to staff at the India-
based certification agency, Indocert, some interna-
tional entities would charge more than the annual income of an Indian
farmer just for one day of inspection. Peringarapillil argued vehemently
that such fees were unscrupulous: “Some of the clever Western
. . . certi-
fication bodies were exploiting . . . farmers. And the corporates, in a big
way, like, like, they used to get a remuneration of five hundred dollars
per day, and a posh star hotel
. . . for certification. . . . And the corporates
could afford [it].” In other words, the majority of Indian farmers—unlike
larger farmers or those connected to corporate bodies
—could not man-
age the cost of having a third party guaranteeing that their farms were
authentically organic.
To circumvent these hefty certification fees, Peringarapillil and oth-
ers began investigating other options for any farmer interested in organic
crops in Kerala, not just in Wayanad. In 2000, with financial assistance
from the Catholic Church, Peringarapillil atended an IFOAM meeting
in Switzerland. He took along a congregant in his church, Mathew Se-
bastian, who had a business background and had approached the priest
earlier to express his interest in certification. During this trip, Peringara-
pillil recalled that they encountered members of Organic Agriculture
Certification Thailand (ACT), an organic certification agency based in
that country. The existence of ACT, an organization outside of Europe
and America, fueled their desire to set up a similar entity in India.
Serendipitously, Peringarapillil and Sebastian also met with a German
staff member of IFOAM who had previously traveled to Kerala. He so
fondly recalled his experiences that he introduced the two Keralites to the
Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), a government agency
under the Swiss Ministry of Commerce. This agency had been investing
in development initiatives in countries like India, and the idea of India-
based certification piqued its interest.38 After several rounds of discus-
sions, SECO eventually funded two organizations to set up an Indian pilot
