Growing consumer demand for organic food is driving some South African farmers to disguise non-organic products as organic. This is making it increasingly difficult for organic certifiers to keep a watchful eye on farmers, according to Diana Callear, MD of Afrisco, an organisation that certifies organic produce.
Callear says some farmers, who farm for the money and not for the love of food, buy non-organic products from surrounding farms and sell them among organic products.
Afrisco counters this through careful auditing. At the beginning of each year all farmers must report how much produce they expect to grow and sell. If they sell more than what was expected for the year, they are suspect, says Callear.
Farmers are also expected to run tight procedures in their pack houses. Organic foods must be well marked and not packed at the same time as non-organic products. Machines and surfaces must be cleaned between packing non-organic and organic products.
Organic farmers must ensure their produce is not affected by neighbouring non-organic farms’ pesticides by creating buffer areas. Planting trees and hedges to create borders around farms, and by growing produce 15m away from the edges of the farm, will prevent crops from being covered with pesticide. Neighbouring non-organic farmers are also told not to spray pesticides on windy days.
But farmers are not always to blame if pesticides are found on organic foods.
Callear tells a story of how one South African supermarket chain complained that there was residue (pesticides) on its organic fruit. ‘It turned out that the residue came off the supermarket’s shelf,” she says.
So what makes food organic?
Dietician Mariza van Zyl says the old-fashioned way is the organic way. She uses cattle farming as an example: ‘If a cow roams around in the Eastern Cape eating natural grass and isn’t on constant antibiotics, if one milks that cow, the milk will be organic and if one eats that cow, the meat will be organic.”
Peter Singer, author of What We Eat and Why it Matters, encourages customers to chat to producers and even to perform their own farm inspection.
‘You can say, ‘Can I come and see your farm?’ and if they say no you should be suspicious. If they say yes, that’s a good sign but you should try and take them up on it,” he says.
The Mail & Guardian took Singer’s advice and asked Woolworths’s apple farmer, Gys de Toit, if anyone could visit his farm and check that the products are genuinely organic.
De Toit said that private visits could definitely be arranged.
Callear says that Woolworths is very careful and checks its organic products regularly. So Woolies’s ‘conscientious omnivores” need not panic.