Differentiating Organics: Performing Multiple Objects to Organize Singular Markets for Organic Tea and Biscuits in the UK - Re-Thinking Organic Food and Farming in a Changing World - page 68

donors (EPOPA program), 5 including an East African organic standard, a national
Tanzanian organic agriculture movement (TOAM) and a certification agency, as
a parallel regulation for organic without the involvement of the already existing
actors in the organic tea sector (Mbiha and Ashimogo 2010 ). Moreover, these two
'organics' are working largely in isolation of each other. Illustrative for this isolation
is the issue that the local organic certification body is not accredited to certify for
the EU regulation, but only for the East African organic standard, which is not
recognized as equivalent by the EU and thus irrelevant for export production. This
parallelism is illustrated in TOAM's justification of its creation: “At the time of its
[TOAM's] formation, there were a number of actors in the sector whose valuable
interventions were neither coordinated nor well publicized. The actors also had little
knowledge of each other and each other's activities” (Organic Africa Pavilion 2011 ).
Indeed, TOAM has consistently included one of the tea estates in its promotional
material, despite no formal participation of the estate in TOAM's activities. We
are beginning to see efforts at coordinating a national Tanzanian organic sector,
but this process is far from complete. Therefore, what we see in terms of 'parallel
organics' is an organic movement, rather than a commercial enterprise, which enacts
an image of 'sustainability' reflective of only a small portion of the story of organic
in Tanzania.

4.5.3 Cross-Certified

Cross-certification between organic and Fairtrade standards is well noted in the
literature (Parrish et al. 2005 ; Raynolds et al. 2007 ; Loconto 2010 ). This duplicity
is an enactment of organic that is found often in tropical commodities, both in the
consumer market and in production practices. On the one hand, the consumer labels
in the UK market clearly demarcate borders between the Fairtrade and Organic
attributes of a cross-certified product:
Organic is your assurance that this product is sourced from growers who avoid
the routine use of pesticides to give you high product quality while enriching
the environment through organic farming methods. Fairtrade is an alternative to
conventional international trade, providing the security of long term contracts
as well as the payment of a social premium to allow for democratically agreed
investment in projects such as education, water supplies and medical facilities
(Co-operative 2010 ).
The focus is on communicating to consumers what each of these concepts should
mean to producers. On the other hand, this differentiation was not found to be
so clear in the practice of organic farming in Tanzania. The two estates that are

5 EPOPA stands for Export Promotion of Organic Products from Africa. The program was funded
by Sida (Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency) and was implemented between
1997 and 2008 by Grolink and Agro Eco.