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 53

and standardized conformity assessment process. Comparing the project pre- and
post-certification, one interviewee, who was involved with the sustainable shrimp
project from the beginning, and later became one of the founding members of PA,
commented,
Organic certification is very Western idea. I think organic certification is definitely a
product of Western ideology. It's based on 'contractual agreements,' quite stiff, and lack
of flexibility. It's based on rationality, documentations, contracts, and signature. There is no
human-to-human relationship entailed.

In other words, personal relationships and relations of trust were largely replaced
with notions of calculability and objectivity, which were enforced through formal
contracts. 8

3.4.3 Audits of Sustainable Farming

Prior to organic certification, there was no active enforcement of the standards.
As noted above, efforts by SN and co-op members to ensure compliance with the
standards by farmers were largely based on relations of trust. The belief was that in
building personal relationships, each party would come to understand and respect
each other's priorities. Thus, in its original form, the project permitted considerable
autonomy to farmers, allowing them to be solely responsible for compliance with
the standards. Such an approach, which embodies trust, respect, and personal
relationships, is congruent with the aims of alternative food and agriculture.
Similar to how the standards and measures of compliance with them changed,
how the standards are enforced also changed significantly with organic certification.
Specifically, farmers have become integrated into a multi-layered audit system .In
the organic project, there were two types of audits: (1) audit of the production site
and (2) audit of the certification process. In both sets of audits, the emphasis was
on objectivity and calculability. That is, the audits should be free of bias, based on
tangible evidence, and replicable.
Auditing of the production site entailed checking compliance by farmers with
the standards and included both internal and external audits. PA, as part of the
ICS system, conducted internal audits. The ICS stipulated that each pond must
have at least one unannounced inspection per production cycle (i.e., 90 days).
Inspectors were also required to be at ponds during harvest time (twice a month,
1 week per time) to oversee the shrimp harvest. During audits, inspectors examined
the documentation completed by member farmers, questioned farmers as to their
practices, completed inspection documents, and searched the huts and ponds
for chemical input packages or containers. Following inspections, farmers were
evaluated and were assigned a pass or fail grade. If they passed, they could sell

8 When approved to become a member farmer in the organic project, farmers had to sign a