The Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (Apeda) has made it mandatory for 100 per cent verification of Indian farmers cultivating organic crops in all growers’ groups.
The verification is mandatory for registration of new organic farmers, renewal of the scope certificate, which confirms a grower’s compliance and issuing a no-objection certificate (NOC) to switch certification organisations, according to a communication by a couple of certification agencies seen by businessline.
“It is a demonetisation or a special intensive revision (SIR) moment in India’s organic farming,” said trade analyst S Chandrasekaran. The development is viewed as one to strengthen the Indian organic farming system.
Failure’s consequences
One of the certification agencies told a growers’ group that continuation of its organic farming project’s certification depends on the timely completion of farmers’ verification, to be completed within 3 months from November 3.
Any failure would lead to penalties on the certification body, delay or withholding of transaction certifications and scope certification renewal or registration getting prolonged.
Any inconsistency in farmer names or formatting through Aadhaar identification during the verification would be reported to Apeda or the technical team of Tracenet, the authority’s software system.
Apeda’s latest directive required farmers to be available for physical verification and ready access of documents, registers, maps and acreage records.
Aadhaar verification
Welcoming the new initiative, an industry source wondered why Aadhaar verification was cancelled a few years ago and is being sought now.
The new stipulations require every farmer group to appoint a manager acquainted with the internal control system (ICS) of organic farming, registering it under the Companies Act or the Cooperative Societies Act or a similar cooperatives or societies Act. Each group should have a three-member approval committee.
Apeda will fix the maximum charge a certification body can levy for the verification process. The growers’ group will have to bear the travel and accommodation expenses of the certification body personnel.
The industry source said a farmer group may have to pay ₹2 lakh, including the fees and travel expenses. The charges could be a burden for some groups. The government or Apeda should consider subsidising the expenses.
Square root formula
The source said as per the National Programme for Organic Production (NPOP), a square root formula should be applied for farmers’ verification. As per Apeda’s Tracenet system, all farmers growing organic crops should have been covered in the past decade.
“Apeda seeking reverification now could mean there have been some lacunae,” said the source, wondering why a similar problem has occurred in the participatory guarantee scheme.
Welcoming Apeda’s initiative, the source said the authority lacks enough staff to monitor organic farming and hence, there is no direct management of farmers.
“Accreditation agencies monitor farmers, but their selection should be stringent, while Tracenet has to be made vibrant,” the source said.
Number of growers down
The Centre told the Lok Sabha on July 29 that per available records, 4,712 active organic grower groups are covering 19,29,243 farmers certified by the accredited certification bodies under NPOP.
This was lower than the 25 lakh farmers, the government said, were in organic cultivation as of July 2022.
The number of organic growers could have dropped in view of problems in organic cotton and sugarcane, besides the organic rice exports scam last year. The Covid pandemic could have also resulted in the drop, the source said.
Published on December 3, 2025