By Gabriele Sutera writing from Kathmandu, Nepal
This blog is also available in Italian

April 26, 2015.The last strong tremor occurred around midday and right after we took the motorbike to go to the village. Along the road we come across several villages. The houses are all closed and shops’ shutters drawn down, they are like ghost villages. Far from the buildings people are sitting on the road and are only meagerly protected from the elements by improvised tents. People are too afraid to go back inside the houses. Since yesterday people have been living on the road or the fields next to their homes. The power of the earthquake’s first tremor is still very fresh in people’s minds. 

Veering off the Priviti highway, the main road that connects Kathmandu and Pokhara, we enter Ghorka‘s district. The further we travel, the more the damage from the earthquake becomes evident. Ten kilometers before Ghorka city we take left onto a gravel road. About half an hour later Tikaram, my colleague and friend, tells me to pull over and stop. We are in front of a stable of which only half a roof remains from its previous structure.  We park the motorbike and start walking; we are now in Mirkot’s VDC (Village Development Committee). We cross the little creek that runs alongside the village and then we follow the path uphill. Suddenly, Tikaram points to a little forest which borders the path and tells me “Eh Arjun, you see this forest? Ten years ago there was no forest”. Puzzled, I wonder why and he explains that a lot of people have left the village since they prefer to live in the city, in India or the in the Terai (Nepal’s lowland plains). The path continues uphill and the forest gives way to a landscape of hillside terraces, recently planted with rice and corn. At some point the path led us in front of two houses belonging to the village of Lapshishour. The inhabitants of the two houses are sitting in front them and are staring blankly at their houses; it is very hot at that time. Both houses are evidently damaged, but still standing. The metal roofs are intact but the thick stone walls, bonded with cement and soil and plastered with red colored soil are cracked. 

I ask if it would be possible to go inside the buildings to have a look. A tiny wooden staircase brings me up to a small balcony on the first floor. The floor is full of stones, dust and plaster flakes. A big hole, one meter high and almost two meters wide, allows the light to enter the rooms which, until then, had been used as bedrooms and storage rooms. From outside the buildings almost looked good, from inside, however, they are devastated. The inner walls have collapsed; the beds are covered in debris under which only the corners of the bed frame can be seen.  Six quintals of rice and three quintals of maize are entirely covered by dust and big stones. The conditions are similar in the adjacent building, just that in this building not even the door of the bedroom and storage room can be opened. The next harvest, and consequently period of income and food availability, is going to be in almost three months. We have to return to the valley before it gets dark. While we are walking with Tikaram we discuss the fate of the little village and its 100 residents. He thinks the earthquake marks the end of this community. At the village down in the valley the people invite us to drink tea and they tell us how violent the first tremor was.

I was at the farm when the first earthquake struck the day before, and it caused the water from the water storage tank next to which we were working tip and spill. It was supposed to be a happy day; we were harvesting cow horns with inside the BD500 preparation, a treasure for those who practice bio-dynamic farming. About one hour after the first tremor there was a second very strong earthquake. Our neighbor Gimre, who came to help us that day, literally jumped as far as possible from the water tank and held onto my arm squeezing it strongly through the shaking. We still did not realize how bad the situation was in the rest of the country. Right after lunch we heard the first news. I contacted a friend who was traveling toward Kathmandu and he described a destroyed city in chaos. Tremors continued throughout the night. The next morning, same as every other normal working day, the farm workers came punctually at 5.45, since the work day begins at 6 o’clock. At 10 o’clock after the daily breakfast meal of daal baat tarkari (lentils, rice and vegetables) the workers left to take care of their houses, belongings and families since they expected more earthquakes. Tikaram, the farm’s manager, was able to get in touch with his mother who lives in a village not far from the earthquake’s epicenter, about 20 km. Her house was partly destroyed. I proposed Tikaram to take the motorbike to pay a visit to his mother’s village, it was almost midday. 

In Nepal and in the area affected by the earthquake there are many villages such as Lapshishour. Right now all the attention is turned toward Kathmandu and highly populated residential areas. Rural areas and their inhabitants have not been not considered much by media as remote are very difficult to reach. Time for reconstruction is likely to be long and the rainy season is forthcoming. What will become of the smallholder farmers and the inhabitants of remote areas who rely almost fully on their own harvests and energies to survive?

By Jaime Pérez Molina writing from Copenhagen, Denmark

By Mariola Acosta Francés writing from Sri Lanka

The tasting room of a tea factory in Central Province, Sri Lanka was adorned with pictures of happy women flashing big toothy smiles, harvesting tea as colorful butterflies  floated idyllically in the fields. Looking at the pictures and reading the panels, visitors cannot help but feel that the plantation is both protective of the environment and socially conscious.

However, one doesn't need to live in Sri Lanka for a long time to learn that, in reality, most tea estates are far from being either environmentally friendly or socially fair. In fact, it is the contrary: most tea fields in Sri Lanka are vast swaths of heavily sprayed, monocropped land and the tea pickers, the majority of whom are women, are amongst the poorest communities in the country and face great financial struggles to feed and sustain their families. To anyone who has spent some time in Sri Lanka, these panels at the tea factory feel very misleading. When asked about this apparent contradiction, this specific factory justified their claims of environmental sustainability by their recent installation of some rubber trees in the otherwise monocropped tea fields. Their understanding of what constitutes “environmentally sustainable” clearly did not match mine. However, given that most of the visitors ended up buying considerable amounts of tea after the factory visit, it appears that their greenwashing strategy was successfully doing its job. This example from Sri Lanka is only one of the many cases that one can find, both in developed and developing countries, of greenwashing, where companies spend more time and money marketing their sustainable initiatives than they do in actually implementing meaningful changes. 

Since the 1980s, and partly as an antidote to greenwashing, an increasing number of certifications schemes have emerged with the aim to regulate products labeled as organic, socially conscious, sustainably produced, etc. These certifications ensure consumers that their products meet certain quality standards and thereby prevent fraudulent or misleading marketing. For example, take the cartoon on my cup coffee this morning which assured me, through a now famous frog, that it was Rainforest Alliance certified. This means that a third party certifying body has ensured that the coffee in my cup was produced following certain standards.

However, how much do we, as consumers, truly know about these certification standards? What are the fundamental differences between, for instance, a Fair Trade certified coffee versus a Rainforest Alliance certified coffee? Certainly there are many more differences and nuances between certification schemes than one would initially expect. With an increasing number of certification schemes, and with standards constantly being modified, it is sometimes difficult as a consumer to choose the product and brand with the certification label that best matches one’s values and needs. Indeed, the amount of information that those labels hide can be truly overwhelming for consumers.

For instance, think about an organic product and how it was produced. You no doubt have a vision of what would constitute organic production. However, does the version of organic production in your mind match the version of organic production that is represented on the label? The answer: maybe not.  Certification requirements for “organic” production systems can indeed differ significantly depending on the product you are producing and the country or region where you want to sell your products. Additionally, third-party certification is complex and expensive, and in many occasions beyond the reach of smallholder farmers interested in producing organically.

What if there was a more flexible type of organic certification that on the one hand allowed consumers to have a close look at the certification process and get to know first-hand the producers and on the other hand gave smallholder farmers access to the organic certification process so that they could get better prices for their products at the local market? A new system of alternative organic certifications seems to have found an answer.

Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) were initially conceived in 2004 as a surrogate for third party organic certification but have only recently emerged as a viable alternative in many countries around the globe (a comprehensive list of all PGS systems can be found at the IFOAM site). PGS is based on a set of standards and certification processes that are constructed in a participatory manner by different stakeholders of a specific community or region, such as organic producers, agronomists and consumers.  This different approach not only keeps certification costs to a minimum but also provides stakeholders with commonly agreed upon understanding of what constitutes “organic” production. 

Clearly, only locally produced products can be certified through a PGS system and most consumers must still rely on third party certification schemes for imported products. However, PGS offers a medium term solution where consumers can take an active role in the certification system and can learn first-hand about the local organic standards by visiting the smallholder producers and, in doing so, promote local smallholder organic cultivation. In practical terms, this means being able to personally judge whether a tea plantation is cultivating in a sustainable way or understanding exactly how the organic carrots I buy every week at the market are produced. PSG means promoting and giving credibility to local organic production and creating trust and a direct relationship with our local organic farmers.