GLOBALG.A.P. meets with Italian apple producers and NTWG

Last month, GLOBALG.A.P. senior management visited the Italian region of Trentino-South Tyrol to attend a meeting hosted by the association of Italian apple producers Assomela. Representatives from the GLOBALG.A.P. national technical working group (NTWG) coordinated by CSO Italy were also in attendance.  

Visiting from GLOBALG.A.P. c/o FoodPLUS were Managing Director Elmé Coetzer-Boersma, Vice President and Chief Integrity Officer Andras Fekete, and Senior Technical Expert Heidi Gremminger. 

As Assomela represents 75% of apple production across Italy – a country with one of the highest numbers of GLOBALG.A.P. certificate holders – this was a valuable opportunity for GLOBALG.A.P. leaders to be in direct contact with producers.

The meeting largely focused on Option 2 certification, which applies to producer groups sharing a quality management system. For smallholder producers which often lack the necessary resources, funding, and expertise to individually meet the requirements for certification to GLOBALG.A.P. standards, Option 2 certification is designed to make certification more accessible.  

The parties acknowledged the impact of producer organizations in implementing Option 2 certification across large-scale producer groups, and discussed Assomela’s request to simplify Option 2 certification to further increase its accessibility. This is particularly topical as the Integrated Farm Assurance (IFA) standard version 6 and GLOBALG.A.P. Risk Assessment on Social Practice (GRASP) add-on version 2  are scheduled to become obligatory in January 2024. Many producer groups are still certified to previous versions of IFA and GRASP under Option 2 certification.  

The experts agreed that a new national interpretation guideline (NIG) is needed to maintain GLOBALG.A.P. standards’ compatibility with local legislation. The NTWG Italy will now be tasked with the development of a new NIG to bridge the gaps without compromising standard requirements.  

“The visit was important to help us understand the implementation of group certification (Option 2) on such a large scale, where everything is organized via the producer organizations. It was insightful and illustrative of an outcome-based approach as intended by the new Integrated Farm Assurance v6,” said Dr. Coetzer-Boersma.  

Assomela Director and GLOBALG.A.P. Advisory Board member Alessandro Dalpiaz added, “The meeting was of mutual importance and satisfaction, both for the representatives of GLOBALG.A.P. who were able to understand the quality and the cornerstones of the Italian cooperative system, and also for the producers, who found much openness to make the collaboration with GLOBALG.A.P. even more solid but also more versatile.” 

Photo: By kind permission of Assomela