Agriculture Reference
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certification body: the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL)
and Bio.Inspecta, a Swiss certifier. Together with Peringarapillil and Se-
bastian, FiBL and Bio.Inspecta formed an experimental body: the Indian
Organic Certification Agency, now colloquially known as Indocert.
Indian certification proceeded to take off rapidly after this watershed
event. The Indian Ministry of Commerce immediately took to Indocert,
holding it up as a model for new and future Indian certification bodies.39
In 2002, Indocert received accreditation from APEDA. Indocert then cer-
tified its first organic farmer under the requirements of India's new NPOP:
Wayanad's own Chackochan. As for FiBL, it continued to fund Indocert
and train staff in organic certification, inspection, quality control, and
accreditation until 2008. Today, Indocert is an independent entity. Per-
ingarapillil is currently the president of Indocert, and Mathew Sebastian
is its executive director.40
Peringarapillil believes that India-based certification empowers farm-
ers in Kerala, by providing them access to foreign markets without having
to rely on European certifiers who require “posh hotels” when visiting
India. According to him, certification based in India is “revolutionary”
and “something popular, for the people, for the ordinary [farmer].”
Indocert now works like this: It has sliding fees, depending on the size
of a farm, the hours involved to inspect it, and travel time. Costs are calcu-
lated on an hourly basis. One large-scale farmer reported paying around
14,500 rupees, about $270, for certification in one year.
These fees are even less for individuals participating in group certi-
fication through an internal control system (ICS) or an official certified
organic farming group.41 IFOAM defines an ICS as “a documented qual-
ity assurance system that allows an external certification body to dele-
gate the annual inspection of individual group members to an identified
body/unit within the certified operator. This means in practice that a
growers group basically controls all farmers for compliance with organic
production rules according to defined procedures.”42 A third-party cer-
tifier like Indocert audits an ICS for compliance by reviewing the group's
documentation and inspecting some (but not all) farmers on its own.43
Because many Indian farmers have struggled to pay Indocert's annual
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