The Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Agency (Apeda), an arm of the Commerce Ministry, is unable to help farmers get certification for their organic produce at a lower cost.

The cost of certification by various agencies/companies for individual farmers is over ₹1 lakh, which they cannot afford. Farmers want Apeda to step in but a fund crunch in the export promotion body is preventing such help to be extended to farmers in the form of a subsidy or grant. The annual budgetary allocation of Apeda is fixed at ₹80 crore since 2022-23 — a reduction from ₹85 crore allotted in 2021-22.

The fund crunch is leading to the agency getting constrained in helping farmers avail of certification at lower costs, which will enable them to get better prices from the export market.

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi met some select farmers at Delhi’s Pusa institute on August 11, Ravinder Kumar of Delhi requested that instead of the certification issued to a group of farmers in a cluster, it should be issued to individual farmers.

Official sources said under the National Programme for Organic Production (NPOP), certification is done through a cluster approach to minimise the costs as issuing it to individual farmers is costlier.

“The costs under Participatory Guarantee System India (PGS-India) are much less but the products certified under it are not recognised outside India. Farmers have to follow certification under NPOP to export,” said a senior official involved in organic promotion.

“There are as many as 37 agencies/companies (including 3 whose permits are suspended) approved by Apeda to undertake certification under NPOP, out of which as many as 14 are by State governments.”

“The cost of certification in State government-owned agencies is one-tenth of private companies or may be even less, still all serious organic exporters do not prefer them over private entities,” said an expert.

It is like a chicken-egg puzzle where Apeda needs to take the first step of freeing farmers from the clutches of traders/exporters by allowing them freedom to sell “certified organic produce” to any exporter who offers them better rates.

He highlighted as an example the ongoing struggle of organic cotton farmers of Madhya Pradesh for the past 2-3 years.

“Once certified in a group, a farmer loses freedom and that is a key stumbling block in the growth of organic exports,” he added.

“If the certification becomes easier as an individual farmer, it will be beneficial for me since many farmers have a claim to the certification in a group. After I raised the issue with the PM, an official was instructed to note down the concern,” said Kumar, who owns seven acres and does chemical-free farming on his entire farm.

Kumar said he is part of a group of 50 organic farmers of five villages in Delhi, covering an area of 30 acres under organic farming that has been certified under PGS-India for the whole cluster by a third party agency Divya Yoga Trust. Sumit Dagar, another farmer who organised the organic farmers of Delhi, said most of their produce — wheat, basmati, bajra, pulses and vegetables — are sold locally while some quantity is sold to organic farmers in Himachal Pradesh, who do not grow these products.

Dagar said the certification cost under PGS-India is ₹1,500 per crop for the entire group.

Trade sources said the cost of organic certification under NPOP by a well-reputed multinational company is over ₹1 lakh.

However, due to the global reputation of these companies, particularly by importers of the buying countries, exporters prefer to hire them, sources said, adding that some State agency takes even 8-9 months just to enroll a group, which could be done online by using digitised land records data.