PGS- Inspection visit

30 March 2017, Chiang Mai, Thailand

This programme has hosted by Green Connex Project. TOA partners (12 people) joined with young organic farmers (5 people) and traveled to Amphor Sansai to visit organic farmers. The communities got support and join the “Biz Green Organic” Project under Business Administrative, Maejo University. The project purposes are 1) developing the organic farmer network in the neighboring area of Maejo University 2) Raising Awareness on organic food and consumer club in Maejo University 3) Developing a fair organic marker in Maejo University 4) Developing a participatory process and pricing mechanism and 5)Organics’ policy advocacy.

Our group visited natural and organic farm from those who apply Participating Guarantee System (PGS), during the inspection visit our group had deepened the understanding about the PGS.

The PGS has involvement from multi-stakeholder such as producer, academic, and consumers. The committee will form base on the trust building and common ground. The inspection visit, the committee will observe and check the farm on various aspects, for example soil nourishment, water management, surrounding environment, and others. Regarding the checklist of Biz Green Organic, the inspection, please see the figure.

Maejo University Organic Seeds Project

In the afternoon, we visited the Organic Seed Conditioning and Quality Testing Project, which has been run for more than 10 years, this project has certified by IFOAM for organic certification, mainly open pollination (OP) seeds has been re-produced, sold to the royal project, and distributed to farmers. 

There are more than 34 varieties of vegetable available, such as green-oak, rad-oak, lettuce, basil, lady figure, tomato, eggplant,chili, beans, and etc.

The project presented and shared the knowledge on farm management; to set up water irrigation appropriately and use the local material wisely, for example, soil nourishment by growing sunn hemp (a nitrogen-fixing plant) after harvesting. Regarding the Seed Conditioning and Quality Testing, this project is fully equipped and functioned with drying machines, seeds cleaning machine and germination incubator to produce and control the good quality of seed production.