OFPA covers organic agricultural methods and materials in great detail, including soil fertility, the application of manure, crop rotation, and composting. Compost ingredients recommended by the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) include crop residues, crop waste from food processing operations, animal manure, yard waste from private or municipal sources, or other vegetable by-products. NOSB recommends prohibiting municipal solid waste compost and sewage sludge compost, and the use of any prohibited material as a compost ingredient.
 
OFPA also establishes a National List of acceptable and prohibited materials. These can include pest control treatments as well as other agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and seed treatments. NOSB recommends that all agricultural inputs be evaluated for their long-term effect on the environment and not simply whether they are synthetic or natural.
 
It is obvious that these are fairly stringent requirements and so not at all easy to meet. Apart from this, it is extremely difficult for small growers in other countries in particular, who may well meet all of these criteria in actuality, to establish conclusively that they do so, especially through maintaining records etc.
 
On an international level, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) has developed  the Codex Alimentarius for organic products. FAO has declared that it will give increasing support to organic farming and wants to achieve harmonization of different national organic standards to spur international trade with organic products. There is already an International Federation for Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), which is an International umbrella of organic agricultural accreditation programmes.
 
The IFOAM was established in 1972 in France. There are 600 organizational members of IFOAM from 120 countries, including India. The main thrust of IFOAM was to define the concept of organic farming through their basic standards. Another important task of IFOAM is to harmonize certification programmes through accreditation system. The other activities of IFOAM include participation in the UN and contact with international NGOs and communication through seminars, magazines etc.

Organic farming and certification in India
In India, the relative lack of national rules, regulations and specific standards relating to organic food production, inadequate certifying agencies and unrecognized 'green' marketing and retailing channels have not only been confusing for producers and consumers alike, but have prevented farmers from exploiting the export market advantages of organic production.
 
This is a major missed opportunity because most small and marginal farmers in India have actually been practicing organic farming as part of traditional cultivation practice. Thus they have used local or own-farm derived renewable resources and managing self-regulating ecological and biological processes. In fact, this is usually found to be absolutely necessary simply in order to cultivate acceptable levels of crop, livestock and human nutrition products while protecting them from pests and diseases through bio-chemicals and bio-fertilizers (such as Neem extract). However, it is true that the higher cost of such inputs and processes compared to industrially generated fertilizers and pesticides has encouraged many farmers to shift production patterns.
 
It is true that the Government of India has now woken up – if belatedly – to this problem and is now attempting to establish at least the basic rules and accreditation processes which are necessary. In March 2000, the Ministry of Commerce launched the National Programme for Organic Production (NPOP), designed to establish national standards for organic products which could then be sold under the logo ‘India Organic’. To ensure the  implementation of NPOP, the National Accreditation Policy and Programme (NAPP) has been formulated, with Accreditation Regulations  announced in May 2001. These make it mandatory that all certification bodies, whether already engaged or proposing to engage in inspection and certification of organic crops and products, should be accredited by an Accreditation Agency. Foreign certification bodies operating in the country must also be accredited.
 
The appointed Accreditation Agencies are the Agricultural & Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), Coffee Board, Tea Board and Spices Board. At present, only APEDA has invited applications for accreditation. An appointed Evaluation Agency is to ascertain the programmes and credentials of the implementing agencies and submit its report to the Accreditation Agency. According to information from APEDA, to avoid duplication a common Evaluation Agency and Committee for Accreditation will be formed with experts and members drawn from other Accreditation Agencies.
 
The Regulations also make a provision for export, import and local trade of organic products. Currently, however, only the export of organic products comes under the government regulation, while imports and local trade do not. Thus, an agricultural product can only be exported as an ‘Organic Product’ if it is certified by a certification body duly accredited by APEDA as one of the accreditation agencies. The categories of products covered under accreditation are organic crop production, organic animal production, organic processing operations, wild products and forestry.
 
The World Bank has organised a project designed to empower rural communities to export organic spices. The main programmes envisaged under the project are improvement and promotion of organic production of spices, certification and export of selected spices like black pepper, white pepper, ginger, turmeric, cardamom, clove, nutmeg and western herbal spices like rosemary, thyme, oregano and parsley. The programmes are being taken up in selected project sites in Idukki and Wynad districts in Kerala, Nilgiris district of Tamilnadu and Kandhmal district of Orissa, and implemented through locally based NGOs, from the year 2000 to 2003.
 
The salient features of the project are, imparting training to NGOs and farmers on basic standards, organic production methods, documentation, inspection and certification. The project also envisages empowerment of NGOs by providing PCs and software for market promotion of organic products. The ITC will conduct market survey in potential markets of organic products and disseminate the information to the potential producers in India. Certification of the project areas as organic is also envisaged under the project. Only 30 percent of India’s total cultivable area is covered with fertilizer where irrigation facilities are available and the remaining 70 percent of the arable land, which is mainly rainfed area, has not been using any fertilizer. Also, it is estimated that around 600 to 700 million tonnes of agricultural waste is available in the country every year but most of it is not properly used. There are several alternatives for supply of soil nutrients from organic sources like wormi-compost, biofertilizers etc. Technologies have been developed to produce large quantities of wormi-compost. There are specific biofertilisers for cereals, millets, pulses and oilseeds.
 
However, such biofertilizers and biopesticides have not become very popular in India for two reasons. The first is the lack of marketing and distributing network. Retailers are typically not interested in selling bio inputs because their demand is low, supply is erratic and farmers are ignorant about bio inputs. The second reason is because of the presence of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, with their heavy advertisement, public support and higher margin for retailers. All these problems also need to be addressed if a more comprehensive state support for organic farming is to be considered.
 
The many aspects of such a project make it clear that such a process of encouraging a shift to organic farming along internationally accepted lines, and producing organic food for export, is a very expensive process. It can only be attempted even by development agencies and NGOS, in specific pockets or villages, and extending it over wide areas and a sizeable number of cultivators would require large resources that are not easy to raise or  access.There is no doubt that organic agriculture is in many ways an eminently preferable pattern for developing agriculture and countries like India in particular. Organic agriculture can offers multiple benefits. These include price premiums, natural resource conservation (e.g. improved soil fertility and water quality, prevention of soil erosion, preservation of natural and agro-biodiversity) and social effects (e.g. generation of rural employment and corresponding lower urban migration, improved household nutrition and local food security, reduced dependence on external inputs).
 
But to take advantage of trade opportunities, developing countries must contend with a plethora of national and regional standards, as described in Tables 1 and 2, and high certification costs. It is not just that active international efforts are needed to reduce these costs, particularly for smallholders, and facilitate market access. In addition, a big role has to be played by developing country governments to develop supportive policies for encouraging organic agriculture, both for exports and to enhance local food security. In a country like India, this can imply tensions between pricing policy, input supply and the priorities of ensuring that the public distribution system actually meets the food needs of all the population.