Faulty certification puts India's organic cotton under a cloud

Is the organic cotton exported out of India truly organic? That’s a question hanging over the certification of organic cotton.

The question arose after the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority, or APEDA, the nodal agency for the export of agricultural products, recently suspended the licence of a leading certification agency. This came after an internal investigation revealed that the agency had certified non-organic cotton from grower groups (which are akin to farmer producer organisations, or FPOs) as organic cotton.

India, according to some experts, annually exports around 120,000 tonnes of organic cotton, most of which is certified by designated agencies.

Sources said the agency had certified non-organic cotton produced by over 150 grower groups from across India as organic, but it was later found falling short of standards.

Several of these grower groups were based out of leading cotton producing states of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra.

The matter came to light in December last year when a surprise investigation by an evaluation committee under the National Programme for Organic Promotion (NPOP) found that this particular certification agency had approved not only cotton grown through non-organic methods as organic but that Bt cotton, too, had been certified as organic.

The investigation found that some of the farmers the certification agency had listed as part of the grower groups existed only on paper and the actual farmers were unaware that they were part of grower groups that were meant to grow only organic cotton.

The committee, on further evaluation, also found that farmers who sold these very products in the mandis did not sell them as organic cotton.

The NPOP panel concluded that bec­ause the cotton produced by these grower groups did not follow prescribed standards, it could not be called organic.

Some experts said the evaluation panel also found that the area claimed by the agency as organic was not found to be so.

Following the probe, APEDA has cancelled the certification agency’s licence and imposed a hefty penalty on it.

However, several experts said that the matter does not end here. Certification of organic products for export and even for domestic consumption has for long been a problem area, they added.

Since 2014, several certification agencies have been suspended or banned for wrongly classifying non-organic products as organic or failing the compliance norms.

Experts said unless the grower groups that have misled not only the consumers but also the gullible farmers are nabbed and action taken against them, penalising the certification agency won’t serve any purpose.

“Recently, a certification company was suspended due to numerous non-conformities and violations but the grower groups certified by this agency are getting transferred and acquired by other agencies without appropriate scrutiny and using systemic weaknesses. Though the certification agency

was suspended by authorities, the problems still exist on the ground,”

S Chandrasekaran, trade policy analyst, told Business Standard.

He said the notable fact is that the certification agencies have been ready to pick up these grower groups, which reflects the predominant character of commercial interest over virtue.

“The problem in NPOP is systemic as well as structural. The grower group policies and procedures need a detailed revamp in addition to the creation

of institutional capacity,” Chandra­sekaran added.

According to the APEDA website, as on March 31, 2021, the total area under organic certification process (registered under the National Programme for Organic Production) in India was around 4.34 million hectares (2020-21). This included 2.65 million hectares of cultivable area and another 1.68 million hectares of wild harvest collection.

Among all the states, Madhya Pradesh has covered the largest area under organic certification followed by Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Karnataka.