Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
certified supplier groups, second only behind South Africa (TIED and NRI, 2008). In
this case study, 600 smallholders were accredited to both GLOB ALG. A.P and the
ETI base code through the export company. This exporter has also recently gained
fair trade accreditation for some of its smallholders.
According to GLOBALG.A.P, their standard serves as a practical manual for
good agricultural practice anywhere in the world, based on equal partnership
between agricultural producers and retailers. However, the audit process includes
complex requirements for record-keeping, high amounts of tehnical knowledge, and
adherence to advanced labour and welfare laws, all based on a European style of
agricultural management (Campbell and Le Heron, 2007). A large body of researh
reveals that while GLOBALG.A.P has brought some improvements, African small-
holder farmers remain disadvantaged by the costs of compliance, hain management
pressures and threshold effects. Similar criticisms have been made of the ETI and
fair trade. As a result, many smallholders have shited to markets whih do not re-
quire GLOBALG.A.P compliance. In Kenya, smallholder involvement in export hor-
ticulture has reduced by 60 per cent since 2002 due to the costs associated with eth-
ical accreditation (Borot de Batisti,
et al
., 2009, p41; IIED and NRI, 2008, p12). As
suh, GLOBALG.A.P was viewed not only as a major barrier to trade for Kenyan
smallholders, but also as overly eurocentric, and as having litle beneit for the live-
lihoods of smallholders themselves. Similar tensions clearly surround the ETI small-
holder guidelines, considering that discussions of impacts for African smallholders
were completely absent from the most recent ETI conference in 2008.
According to a representative of the Fresh Produce Exporters Association of
Kenya (FPEAK), the first version of EurepGAP (and thus later GLOBALG.A.P) 'had
nothing to do with the African seting'. his has prompted the recent growth of
an 'equivalence movement' in global standards - whereby national standards are
benhmarked against the GLOBALG.A.P standard. In Kenya, this has taken the form
sally accepted standard based on the principles underpinning GLOBALG.A.P, but
whih is customized to meet the needs and priorities of local farming conditions, in-
cluding smallholders. However, while FPEAK was successful in gaining equivalence
on some issues, smallholders themselves remained removed from the decision-mak-
ing process. It emerged that this was largely due to smallholders' under-representa-
tion in the formal hannels of consultation, at the same time as organizations better
