Organic Certification and the Rationalization of Alternative Food and Agriculture: Sustainable Shrimp Farming in Indonesia - Re-Thinking Organic Food and Farming in a Changing World - page 52

completely based on trust, with Japanese co-op members trusting that farmers were
implementing the standards and accurately reporting their farming practices. In large
part, this fits with the aims of shared governance, empowerment, and trust that much
of alternative food and agriculture seeks to promote. However, with certification,
similar to the changes that occurred with the standards, how compliance with the
standards is measured also became more objective and calculable. Specifically, sets
of documentation templates were developed to evaluate production practices, which
farmers and inspectors were required to complete.
As part of organic certification, Green Soil required the development of an
internal control system (ICS) 6 and a set of documentation templates that would
effectively and efficiently measure member farmer compliance with the standards.
To develop and manage the ICS, a local organization, Perlindungan Alam (PA), was
established. One of the initial tasks of PA was to develop a set of documentation
templates to measure compliance by farmers with the standards. Similar to the
process of developing the standards, Green Soil provided model documentation
templates and asked PA to revise them as necessary. PA officials then modified and
created a wide variety of documentation forms to measure farmer compliance with
the standards. Green Soil then reviewed, amended, and approved the documentation
templates.
The membership document template compiled data on each farmer and their
pond(s) including the personal identity of farmers, registered ponds (e.g., their size,
shape, and location), the official date farmers were entitled to have the pond(s),
and whether farmers own the official land certificate. The production practice
document template collected detailed information for each production cycle (i.e.,
every 3 months), including when and which hatchery the shrimp fry came from,
when and how much of the shrimp and milkfish fry were released into the pond(s), 7
how much of the organic pesticide was used and when, and if any additional inputs
were used and when. Similarly, the harvest document template required detailed
information on the start and end time of harvesting and the quantity of shrimp and
milkfish that were harvested from each pond.
As the short descriptions of the document templates indicate, first, checking
farmer compliance was based on the notion of calculability. That is, the documen-
tation templates measured tangible evidence, which could be verified by auditors.
In this way, potential preferences and bias of individual inspector was minimized.
Second, the measurements were 'standardized' measures so that they could be
applied to all member farmers in a consistent manner. In short, constructing the ICS
entailed developing a set of 'standardized' measures to monitor compliance by all
farmers in the project. Thus, with certification, face-to-face relationships and trust
were replaced with a contractual agreement that was enforced through a formal
6 An ICS is an audit-based monitoring system designed to ensure farmer compliance with the
standards.
7 According to Green Soil's organic standards, poly-culture was a required condition for organic