Environmental and Social Standards, Certification and Labelling for Cash Crops

Year of publication2003

AuthorFAO

PublisherFAO

AbstractThe report concludes with a brief discussion of some ongoing debates and the potential role of governments with respect to voluntary social and environmental standards. The first issue of debate is local flexibility versus global credibility of certification programmes. Involvement of a variety of stakeholders in standard-setting is important to ensure that the standard does not unintentionally discriminate against some categories of producers or processors. Equally, standard requirements should always be directly linked to the ultimate objective of the standard and not include superfluous criteria or be too prescriptive on how the objective may be reached. Local specificity may be further taken into account through a system of generic standards that are complemented by local or crop-specific standards, or by a system of minimum and progress standards. In the verification systems, special arrangements may be made for smallholders, such as internal control systems.

 

ThemeAgricultural Commodities and Development

Product typeBook (stand-alone)

SeriesFAO Commodity and Trade Technical Paper

Areas of workTrade Policy and Partnerships