Certified Organic Farming: Awareness of Export Oriented Small-Scale Farmers in Sri Lanka

Abstract

This study aimed at investigating Sri Lankan small-scale Certified organic (CO) farmers’ awareness on their adopted organic standards, the third-party certification body, internal control system, Fairtrade certification, and conditions of contracts with coordinating organizations. A cross sectional survey was conducted among a randomly selected sample of 202 CO farmers who were linked with five coordinating organizations. Primary data was collected using a structured questionnaire along with key informant discussions and field observations. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics to generate simple summaries and tendencies. According to the results, CO farmers are organized as farmer organizations that were initiated as out-grower groups of coordinating organizations. All CO farmers were unaware of the adopted organic standard. The majority were unaware of the third-party certification body (83%), and the internal control system (81.7%). This perhaps due to their exclusion in managing certification related aspects. Thus, showed submissive decision-making behavior. However, many of them were aware of Fairtrade certification (56.4%) as it provides a wide spectrum of additional benefits covering production, marketing, and farmers’ welfare. Farmers were also aware of their contracts (verbal or written) with coordinating firms (62.2%) but hardly conscious of their conditions. In some contracts, conditions were unfairly distributed among stakeholders. Therefore, the study recommends enhancing small-scale farmers knowledge not only the production aspects but also certification, quality assurance, administration, and marketing as well. Meanwhile, mediating the partnership among stakeholders by a government body is also recommended to avoid power abuses among stakeholders.

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