Here, it will be discussed about the marketing distribution, conducted by the farmers. Promoting trade in organic products is a vehicle to improve income of poor farmers through accessing of the organic premium price. In many developed and developing countries, organic products are sold at impressive premium and it is often higher than identical products produced on non-organic farms.

Based on the interview, organic market is still highly potential because the demand of organic vegetables is still increasing. So that to enter this lucrative market is not easy. Reliable market information to sell organic products is difficult to obtain. The marketing distribution of organic vegetables products is different than those of non-organic ones. Since organic vegetables are considered to be ‘special products’, their marketing distribution system is more specific and shorter due to short of expired time and organic vegetables products must always in fresh condition. Based on the survey conducted by author, most organic-vegetable farmers could sell their products directly to the customers who come to their field or through two alternative media (e.g. supermarket and agent).

Based on the survey, most the study farmers from small scale farm operation sell their products through agents and conduct direct selling to consumers. In case of medium and large scale farm operation, they sell their products through agents, supermarket and direct selling to the customers. In case of direct selling to consumers, there are two ways conducted by the farmers. First is in packet way which means the farmers will select the variation of vegetables and put into one pack then sell directly to the customers with price around Rp 45,000/pack. One pack is about four kilograms. In one pack usually contains four to six different kinds of vegetables. Second is the farmers sells organic vegetables per item which means the consumers are able to choose what kind of vegetables that they need, especially they can easily find in the vegetables supermarket.

In addition, by directly selling to the consumers the farmers could sell their products as ‘organic’ ones and obtain premium price. Also, the farmers are convenience because they can interact with consumers personally in order to keep the relationship and educate the consumers about the advantage of their products, so that the consumers will be trust and able to know the advantage of consuming organic vegetables. Furthermore, the payment system of direct selling is easy and fast (COD-Cash on Delivery) because the farmers said they need money immediately to cover the production cost. For selling to the agents, the farmers usually sell only based on the products demanded by the agents. It means the agents will ask to the farmers how much the quantity needs by the agents that they will buy. The price to agents is different from selling to the consumers because these agents will take some marketing margin. The payment method is same like the consumers (COD). In addition, in case of direct selling, the customers of organic vegetable are usually the farmer’s acquaintance or relatives so that the promotion way conducted by the farmers usually word-by-mouth.

 

Mega Integrated Farm (MIF): Organic Vegetables Producer and Chicken Breeders in Sukagalih Village, Bogor City, West-Java, Indonesia

Mrs.Ningsih (owner) started to plant the organic vegetables seven years ago in year 2000. Her land area (in 2007) is approximately one hectares, and not only located in Sukagalih village, but also in Sukabumi-4,900m2 and Yogyakarta-5,000m2 (Central Java). Mrs. Ningsih, a 56 years old organic vegetables farmers is always accompanied with her husband (62 years old) to run the business. Both of them are graduated from the university level as bachelor in Economics Sciences.

In 1999, she joined to the organic plantation training in Central Java in order to explore how to plant the crops, seedling, harvesting, etc. After that, she tried to realized her dreams to plant the organic vegetables until now. In the beginning, she faced so many difficulties, such as harmful insects always attack her vegetables. By collecting a alot of materials (books, magazines, internet) to solve this such a problem, she found something new, Integrated Farm.

In Integrated Farm, we could balancing the agricultural production and environmental protection, because Integrated Farm provides a great opportunity to improve agricultural input management. In conventional agriculture, crop protection is chiefly of a chemical nature. On the integrated farm, however, pesticide were used only as last resort. Chemicals that are known to be highly toxic, persistent, or mobile were avoided.

 

Food price volatility in international markets during 2010 alarmed many involved parties, including in Indonesia. A warning of a possible food crisis in 2011 has been advocated by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). Related international bodies and individual countries should properly address and create various solutions to such a potential crisis.

As reported by the FAO, the benchmark index of farm commodity prices shot up in December 2010, exceeding the levels of the 2007-2008 food crises. International media also reported that in 2010, the prices of staples such as corn, wheat, soybean and sugar increased by more than 20 percent. In particular, the prices of wheat and corn increased by more than 60 percent.

Today’s food shortages around the world are primarily caused by crop failures. Natural disasters, climate change and pest attacks are the common factors of crop failures. Some main food producing countries experienced serious impacts of crop failures, such as failed wheat harvests due to droughts in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

Heavy floods also destroyed farming fields in China, the US and Australia. Other factors contributing to world food shortages are increasing demand for food from new economic powers with huge populations such as India and China, and increasing demand for food to be converted into ethanol fuel.

 

 

Case study of Organic Certification System in Indonesia  
 
National Standardization Agency (Badan Akreditasi Nasional) defines certification as a procedure where government certification agent, private certification which is officially acknowledged by government gives a written guarantee or in form of continuous inspection, quality control system and final check of one product. Those activities are aimed to show and to inform that the process of vegetable production or quality system has been conducted.

Certification has some objectives as follows based Indonesian National Standard (Standar Nasional Indonesia), 2002:

1.To ensure that all processes in preparation, production, storage, delivery and marketing can meet the Indonesian standard for organic products.
2.To promote organic agricultural commodities among producers and consumers particularly regarding food safety and sustainable agriculture.
3.To help producers understands more about international requirements and standards in exports of organic products and be competitive.
4.To maintain and enhance organic farm system at every area in Indonesia, so as to contribute to local and global ecology preservation.
5.To provide international guidance for organic farm production system in order to facilitate recognition of national system for the purpose of import.

 

In Indonesia, in order to receive organic certification, National Standardization Agency decided to elaborate what the organic vegetable mean is so that there is basic standard or guide about organic vegetables. NSA defines organic vegetable as follows:

“Vegetable produced organically and continuously by prioritizing health and productivity of agro-ecosystem included bio-diversity, biological cycle and biological activities of soil naturally in order to produce good qualified products”. (translated by the author, SNI; 2002)

Certification is the most important key-factor for developing organic agriculture because it is needed to expand market of organic products produced by the farmers at present. Therefore, it is necessary to encourage some efforts to increase the number of officially acknowledged and entitled certification agent which can certificate organic products.

Organic foods or products should be cultivated on the land which has been already certified. Before receiving permission to name the products as organic foods, the farmers usually are allowed to put the label named transitional foods. Transitional means food products produced by plants which are cultivated without either synthetic chemical pesticides or fertilizers.

If the food products coming from or produced on any kind of land but without using pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides can be called free pesticides food. However, in this case there is any possibility that the cultivated land had been fertilized with chemical fertilizer. This category is the lowest level called integrated pest management which means the products are cultivated or produced by using very little amount of synthetic pesticides.

 

Procedure of certification is conducted based on standards which is applied at independent certification agent. The applied standards are different between each agent. Japan has Japan Agricultural Standard (JAS), Australia has National Association Sustainable Agriculture Australia (NASAA), Thailand has Organic Agriculture Certification Thailand (ACT), China has Organic Food Development Center (OFDC), and Indonesia has Board of Indonesia Organic Certification (Bio-Cert).