Circa 2009 is likely witness a series of events across the world for promotion of organic products, which may afford India an opportunity to increase its share in the growing global market.
Growing by about $5 billion a year, the estimated size for the global organic market in 2007 was $40 billion. India’s share of exports is only 0.02% and efforts are on to increase it to 0.25% in the next few years and to 2.5% by 2012.
The Germany-based BioFach is slated to organise a four-day global organic trade fair in Nuremberg beginning February 19, 2009. This would be followed by a three-day event in Mumbai from April 29 and a similar three-day event in Shanghai in China from May 27. BioFach’s global organic trade fairs are also slated to be hosted in Boston in September 24-26, in Tokyo in October 7-9 and in Sao Paulo in Brazil in October 15-17.
“This is a unique opportunity for India to showcase its organic products and bag contracts for exports,” said the executive director of MR Morarka Foundation, Mukesh Gupta. MR Morarka Foundation is one of the institutions in India engaged in promoting organic farming.
According to Organic Monitor, 30.4 million hectare land across the world are farmed organically. Australia has the largest area under organic farming at 12.3 million hectare followed by China at 2.3 million hectare, Argentina with 2.2 million hectare and the US with 1.6 million hectare.
India, at present, has a low recorded area under organic farming at only 340,000 hectare which is slated to increase to 2 million hectare by 2012, according to the estimates of the International Competence Centre for Organic Agriculture (ICCOA). Due to low recorded area under organic farming, only 580,000 tonne of organic products were certified in 2008-07 and the Agriculture and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) recorded organic exports to the tune of 47 million euro.
India has a large area of cropped land, which is organic by default. A little over 40% of the cropped area is irrigated according to the government’s estimate and only in these areas is chemical agriculture in vogue. The remaining 60% area has remained organic by default due practically due to no or negligible use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Farmers in these regions follow traditional farming practices. Particularly, Uttarakhand and north eastern India still follow traditional organic practices. No sincere efforts have been made to certify this 60% cropped area as organic. Had it been so, India could have topped other countries in area under organic farming.
Organic certification in India is largely governed by EU-recognised standards and the National Programme for Organic Production has accordingly evolved the procedures, which are implemented by APEDA. The standards formulated by the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), Swiss and US standards are also implemented in India. The cost of certification is high and beyond the reach of ordinary farmers and for this reason, a system of group certification has been evolved.