Politics in participatory guarantee systems for organic food production

Abstract

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd In response to the neoliberal regulation of the organic agri-food sector through third-party certification (TPC), participatory guarantee systems (PGS) are advocated for their potential to promote food sovereignty, inclusivity, and grassroots empowerment. However, we show that in the Philippines, farming groups adopting PGS encounter politics that manifests as tensions and contradictions in the imagination and practice of this seemingly more transformative organic guarantee system. Based on qualitative research, we observed how some members continue to aspire for TPC resulting in cases of double certification (i.e. members having both PGS and TPC). Such contradiction encounters varying levels of contestation, which we attribute to the local particularities of the two PGS systems and the broader structural conditions that continue to privilege TPC. Rather than frame PGS as co-opted by the dominant neoliberalised organic agri-food sector, we emphasise possibilities for farmers’ autonomy in negotiating these tensions.