Earthoil Company Limited works with
smallholder farmers in Nanyuki. They promote production of organic Tea Tree by
contracting farmers. The organization staff members are required by Organic
Standard to be trained annually on issues concerning organic certification.
Mr. Jack Juma and Mrs. Teresa
Ndirangu from KOAN took the Earthoil staff members through different areas that
need critical attention for organic certification. Some of the areas covered
included; documentation needed in each farmers file and how it should be
organized, planning for inspections especially when starting a new round of
inspections, documents to bring for inspections and informing farmers of
inspection.
Other issues covered included;
inspecting mostly non compliant farmers, sanctions to give, tips for an
effective internal inspection and documents to fill or update during and after
inspection.
They were also trained on how they
can plan for extension visits, purpose of extension visits, what to do during
such visits and the duration that it should take to come up with inspection
documents. They were also taken through buffer-zone around organic plots, what
other projects do and the easy way to fulfill such requirements.
Earthoil staff members noted after
the training on the need to improve on farm diaries to farmers’ record keeping.
Some of the issues agreed upon after
the capacity building training included; starting random inspections by the
manager, consolidation of internal inspection days so as to increase number of
extension days, Integrating gender issues in the day to day work of the organization,
properly planning for last internal inspections after knowing when the external
inspection will take place, to standardize about the buffer zones and to be
inviting KOAN during audit times as observers.
By Teresa Ndirangu
The Kenya Organic Agriculture Network
(KOAN) through support from the United Nations Development Program Global
Environment Facility Small Grants Programme (UNDP GEF SGP) organized a one (1)
day training on Internal Control System (ICS) on October 17, 2014 at Old House
Nanyuki, Laikipia County for seven (five male and two female) staff members of
Earthoil Company Ltd.
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| Participants after training |
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