Study on the Improvement of the Result-based Organic Certification System

Interest in eco-friendly agriculture, which began to spread after the pesticide egg incident in 2017, has developed into an essential question in the certification system in 2022. When the eco-friendly agriculture certification system was introduced in the early 2000s, the certification mark itself was the criterion for confidence in the safety of agricultural products, but now the certification system itself is being challenged. Certified farmers began to discuss the burden of the certification system, and consumers began to discuss that certification alone was not enough. The discussion has gradually grown to point out the problems of the certification system itself, and the consensus among producers, farmers and consumers to resolve them is being formed. The certification system has been implemented for the past 20 years in terms of labeling management for certified agricultural products. The emphasis was on which agricultural products to be labeled, so it was a material-based certification system that focused on whether or not the soil and water used in the cultivation process were contaminated based on the agricultural product, which is the final product. However, discussions began to shift to ‘process-based certification’ that focuses on who, in what environment, and how the agricultural products were grown from ‘result-based certification’ that relies on these test analysis results. However, what can be easily overlooked in ‘result-based certification’ or ‘process-based certification’ is the reason for doing ‘organic farming’. Organic farming has value as an alternative to overcome the current crisis, climate crisis, and food crisis in order for humans to continue to the next generation. Therefore, it is time to restore ‘organic agriculture’ in its true meaning through the method of restoring the relationship between humans and nature and cooperation between humans.