Can certification be made more equitable? This seminar will discuss practices with participatory farmer certification drawing on the experiences of Bolivia and Brazil. The speakers will outline participatory guarantee schemes and consider drivers for these schemes and challenges faced in implementation. They will discuss whether participatory certification can contribute to more equitable food systems and debate whether participatory certification can be scaled up or whether it is a mechanism for governing local food transactions.
Paulo Niederle, PhD in Social Sciences, is the Director of the Graduate Center on Sociology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil. Vice-President of the Rural Sociology Latin American Association (ALASRU). Latin American representative on the Research Committee on Agriculture and Food (RC 40) of the International Sociological Association (ISA). He has coordinated research projects on public policies and food markets, and he is author of several books and articles about these same subjects, including “Agrifood System Transitions in Brazil: New Food Orders” (Routledge, 2020).
Giel Ton is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies and Director of the Centre for Development Impact. He specializes in the design of mixed-methods impact evaluations in agricultural value chains and private-sector development and applies Contribution Analysis as an overarching approach of theory-based evaluation. Before joining IDS he worked for Wageningen Economic Research as a Senior Researcher on projects relating to business training, contract farming, export promotion and certification schemes. Previously, he worked as policy advisor for the National Platform of Economic Farmer Organisations and developed proposals for Bolivia’s poverty reduction programme, analysed the legal and administrative environment for farmer associations and cooperatives, and analysed Bolivia’s role in international trade and regional integration.