What’s in the news?

• The Ministry of Commerce and Industry has announced that in terms of quantity, the exports of organic food products grew by 39 per cent to eight lakh 88 thousand metric tonne during the last financial year compared to 2019-20.
• The growth in organic products has been achieved despite logistical and operational challenges posed by the COVID19 pandemic.  
• Oil cake meal has been a major commodity of the organic product exports from the country followed by oil seeds, cereals and millets, tea, medicinal plant products and dry fruits.
• India’s organic products have been exported to 58 countries including USA, European Union, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Switzerland, Israel, South Korea.

Regulations in India

• Organic products are currently exported from India only if they are produced, processed, packed and labelled as per the requirements of the National Programme for Organic Production (NPOP). 
• The NPOP has been implemented by Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) since its inception in 2001.
• The NPOP certification has been recognised by the European Union and Switzerland which enables India to export unprocessed plant products to these countries without the requirement of additional certification. The equivalency with the EU also facilitates the export of Indian organic products to the United Kingdom even in the post Brexit phase.
• India now has more than 30 lakh ha area registered under organic certification and slowly more and more farmers are joining the movement. India ranks fifth in terms of area and is at the top in terms of total number of producers (base year 2019). 
• Despite deep inroads of modern agricultural practices, still, there are large contiguous areas in hills, tribal districts, desert and rained areas in India that continue to remain free from chemical input usage. With little efforts, such traditional/ default organic areas can be brought under organic certification almost immediately. 
• As per the established norm of organic production systems, the areas having chemical input usage history are required to undergo a transition period of a minimum 2-3 years to qualify as organic. During this period, farmers need to adopt standard organic agriculture practices and keep their farms under the certification process. On successful completion, such farms can be certified as organic after 2-3 years. The certification process also requires elaborate documentation and time to time verification by the certification authorities.

Reference:

1. http://newsonair.com/News?title=India%e2%80%99s-Organic-food-products-exports-rises-by-more-than-50%25-in-terms-of-value-in-2020-21&id=415243