From the Ground Up? The Principles of Australian Organic Agriculture - Re-Thinking Organic Food and Farming in a Changing World - page 216

of organic production standards. Organic production guidelines became more
urgent when the European Union demanded that imported organic produce have
a legally enforceable standard of production. NASAA, with the involvement of the
Commonwealth Government Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS)
and other organic growers developed a national standard for certifying organic and
biodynamic farms and produce in 1992.
During the 1990s and early 2000s various other non-government certification
organizations developed their own standards based on the AQIS standards. Although
these standards were originally developed to verify the quality of exported produce
they also became, by default, the standard used to certify produce for domestic
consumption. In 2009 the Commonwealth Government peak standards authority,
Standards Australia, released new minimum standards for Australian organic and
biodynamic production for the domestic market. These standards were based on
and similar to the AQIS guidelines. While the Australian Government licenses
organizations to certify produce and enforces the use of the certification logos,
government regulation remains at arms length, with standards industry regulated.
In 2011 seven Australian organic organizations were certifying Australian
organic farms. The two largest of these are NASAA and Australian Certified
Organic (ACO), the certification arm of the organic growers' association Biological
Farmers of Australia. These two organizations use the government standards as the
basis from which they developed their own, sometimes more stringent certification
requirements. NASAA and ACO, between them, now certify about 90 % of
Australia's estimated two and a half thousand certified organic farms. These farms
are located in all Australian states and territories and manage between 8 and 12
million hectares of land, the largest area of organically managed land per country in
the world (Halpin 2004 ; Willer and Yussefi 2006 ).
Certification encouraged the development of 'the organic industry'. Whereas
organic growers of the past sold their produce on the general market, certification
enabled organic produce to be distinguished from non-organic produce. This
allowed farmers to sell their products as identifiably and verifiably 'organic' and
charge a premium for this. Certified organic cereal, livestock, fruit and vegetables
sold in Australia in the 2000s commanded a price premium of between 50 and
75 % more than the equivalent conventionally grown item (Halpin 2004 ; Willer and
Yussefi 2006 ). The value of organic produce grown in Australia is now estimated
to be more than 100 million Australian dollars, with fruit, vegetables, cereals and
milk the major domestic products and cereals and beef the most important export
products (Willer and Yussefi 2006 ).
The development of commercially oriented organic certification schemes has
caused some commentators of organic farming to question the degree to which the
traditional values and practices of organic growing have remained relevant. Some
academic researchers of the organic industry in North America, Western Europe
and Australia (Buck et al. 1997 ; Tovey 1997 ; Guthman 1998 ; Lyons 1999 , 2001 ;
Jordan et al. 2006 ) have argued that core organic values and practices have been
compromised as government bureaucracies became involved in the regulation of
organic methods and large industrial corporations influenced organic production