Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
India, and it is headquartered in Kerala. All of its members are certified by
Indocert. Shares cost a one time fee of 1,000 rupees but can be purchased
by an ICS, making it affordable for small farmers; the minimum member-
ship requirement is ten shares. Organic Wayanad is a shareholder. Pering-
arapillil and Chackochan are board members.
With financial assistance from Indian government agencies, IOFPCL
staf atend international and national trade fairs to negotiate directly
with buyers. Since 2007, they have been atending Biofach, a global exhi-
bition of organic products, organized by IFOAM and other partners and
held annually in Germany.48 Chackochan usually atends Biofach on be-
half of IOFPCL and Organic Wayanad. At these gatherings, literate and
able to speak English, he meets directly with various buyers interested in
organic products from Kerala. Chackochan has subsequently conversed
with several of these buyers via phone and email. A few interested buyers
have even come to visit him in Kerala, and he has been to Europe to meet
with these buyers, one on one, as well. Because of the connections made
at Biofach, IOFPCL has been exporting several organic commodities to
European and American buyers through the port of Kochi, Kerala, since
2 00 7.49
Between 2010 and 2011, IOFPCL exported several organic products,
all at premiums between 5.77 to 500 percent above the market price for
nonorganic foodstuffs (table 1). Shareholders in the organization have
therefore obtained beter inancial returns by changing their production
practices to qualify for organic certification, a value addition to their com-
modities. This revenue has allowed farmers to expand and improve their
businesses. Chackochan, for one, built a testing and processing facility for
his organic medicinal plants business called Vanamoolika. IOFPCL now
shares this facility to test several of the commodities it has procured from
farmers for chemical residues, moisture, and microbial content.50
In 2010, IOFPCL connected with a German coffee buyer at Biofach, and
since then it has been shipping around eighteen tons of certified organic
coffee to Germany each year.51 Organic Wayanad has been filling most
of this order, marking a significant change in Kerala's history of selling
coffee.52 Prior to joining Organic Wayanad, farmers had been selling the
entirety of their coffee crops to local and regional agents and shops. Most
