Coimbatore: To streamline the process of organic farming and marketing of organic products in the state, the directorate of seed and organic certification under the department of agriculture has submitted a proposal to the state government last week to set up organic certification centres in all districts.Officials of the directorate said the proposal was announced in the budget session in the state assembly last month. Based on this, the director of seed certification and organic certification, A Mathialagan, had sent the proposal, said Irene Priyadarshini, assistant director of agriculture, the Tamil Nadu organic certification department (TNOCD).Currently the only organic certification centre in the state is in Coimbatore and the state has only four inspectors and each of them visits fields across eight districts to inspect produce for organic certification. “The directorate has also sought the government to appoint four more inspectors to make the inspection works easier,” said Priyadarshini. The directorate expects the proposal to be sanctioned soon and certification centres to come up within a year, she said.The process of organic certification involves two levels. In the first, the inspectors visit the field of the farmer who has applied for the certification. They would verify records like input register and harvest register maintained by famers. Based on these, farmers would be provided a ‘Scope Certificate’, using which they can sell produce directly to consumers as organic products.If farmers seek to market their produce through retailers, they have to send samples of their produce to residual analysis in labs authorized for the purpose, and if there are no residues in the produce, they would be issued a ‘Transaction Certificate’. Using this, farmers can label their produce as organic and market it to retailers.While since 2007, when TNOCD had been established, till 2017, only 480 farmers from the state had got certified as organic farmers, Priyadarshini said, adding, in 2018-2019 alone 100 farmers have come forward to be certified. “There is an increase in awareness. This year, the food safety and standards authority of India made it mandatory that for a product to be marketed as organic, it should have the organic certification. So traders have started to emphasize organic farmers to get their produce certified,” she said.

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