HomeEventsFacilitating Access of Small Organic Farmers in Developing Countries to Supermarket Shelves

Facilitating Access of Small Organic Farmers in Developing Countries to Supermarket Shelves

Expert meeting organized by UNCTAD in collaboration with GLOBALGAP and IFOAM

Geneva, Switzerland | 10-11 Dec 09

The basis of the meeting is a comparative study on the GLOBALGAP Fruit and Vegetables Standards and the EU Organic Agriculture Regulation, released in November 2009.

The study provides a sound springboard for discussions at the Ad-hoc Expert Meeting on Facilitating Access of Small Organic Farmers in Developing Countries to Supermarket Shelves, organized by UNCTAD in collaboration with the secretariats of GLOBALGAP (Food Plus GmbH) and the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM). The meeting will bring together representatives of all key stakeholder groups, including producers from around the world, traders, retailers, standard setters and certification bodies to discuss:

• the findings of the comparative study; 
• practical experiences in production and sales of doubly certified products;
• practical options for achieving partial equivalence between GLOBALGAP and organic certification systems or other arrangements to streamline the certification process at the scheme level for dual certifications; 
• a roadmap of activities for further development and implementation of such a scheme (e.g. further analysis, field testing and operationalization  of equivalence approaches).

The meeting is open to all member states of UNCTAD . Representatives of members states, specialized agencies and intergovernmental bodies, wishing to participate as observers, are requested to inform the UNCTAD secretariat  by 1 December 2009.

For further information and relevant documents, please use this link.