Organic Agriculture Certification on Thai Agricultural Standard in Upper Northeast Thailand

抄録

Many countries have controlled measures for imported agricultural commodities. The Department of Agriculture has taken responsibility for the organic agriculture certification, including the quality control of agricultural commodities within the Thai Agricultural Standards (TAS) in the upper-northeast region of Thailand (11 provinces). The objective of this study was to report the factors involved in obtaining and maintaining organic agriculture certification within the entire chain of production. Within our initial year in 2018, there were 73 farms with organic certification (21.92%) and 260 non-certified farms (78.08%) from a total population of 333 farms. The 100% organic certifications consisted of 32 certified farms (86.47%) and 5 non-certified farms (13.51%) from a population of 37 farms. A reassessment of 68 farms at the end of 2018 determined that 63 farms (92.65%) had obtained organic certification versus 5 non-certified farms (7.35%). In the transition period into 2019, 60 farms (28.17%) had obtained organic certification, whereas 153 farms were non-certified (71.83%) from 213 farms. The 100% organic certification was achieved by 56 farms (94.92%) with only 3 uncertified farms (5.09%) from a population of 59 farms. Our re- assessment produced 78 certified farms (98.73%) and only a single non-certified farm (1.27%) from 79 farms. The trend of certifications over two years (2018 and 2019) showed that certified organic agriculture production increased from 38.37 to 55.27%, whereas non- certifications decreased from 61.64 to 44.73%; from 438 to 351 farms, respectively. We determined that there were six main reasons for non-certification of farms: the inability to sustain organic agricultural production within TAS; the lack of a buffer zone to deter pollution from adjacent plantations; the lack of available recorded data for both traceability and verification; the use of chemicals that did not follow TAS protocols; planting areas within some environments caused the contamination of hazardous substances; and, several farms did not have the proper land-rights documents. Improvements and compliance within these areas will, therefore, result in an environmental ecological balance, as well as increased food safety.