Organic Agriculture and Certification in Tanzania 

Introduction

TanCert,was registered by the government of Tanzania in June 2004 as a result of a long stakeholder process to develop a certification programme of organic production system for Tanzania .
Agriculture remains the backbone of the Tanzanian economy and more than 80% of the population engaged in agriculture. In spite of its importance to the national economy and the livelihoods of the majority of the population, the base of the agriculture resources is degrading and poverty persists amongst the agriculture communities. Clearly, past approaches to agriculture development have not managed to eradicate poverty. Degrading base of natural resources, declining productivity of farming systems and deepening poverty all attest the past failures of the agriculture models that have been emphasised over many years.
The organic agriculture has been proven in Tanzania and worldwide to be a sustainable holistic farming system that sustains the productivity of the resource base of agriculture, conserves nature, being economically equitable and socially just. The organic stakeholders in Tanzania and their supporters are committed to making a contribution to the achievements of the sustainable goals of organic agriculture. It is with the above background that stakeholders of organic agriculture in Tanzania founded TanCert with the following mission:
"To contribute to the development and strengthening of environmentally sustainable systems by providing credible and transparent certification services. TanCert will actively facilitate the development of realistic and acceptable environmentally sustainable production standards in Tanzania and the rest of the world" .
TanCert is dedicated to working with all stakeholders in the sector to ensure that high quality organic products are produced and brought to the consumers.  

Governance

TanCert is being governed by a Board comprised of democretically elected members. Each of the members has equal voting rights. It is a qualified Board; which balances between technical know how, policy and business. The Board is responsible to the Annual General Meeting which is the highest decision making instrument and is held every year. On day to day activities TanCert is managed by technical staffs that are constantly updated through specific training programme. TanCert has a number of experts with proven capability of providing inspection and certification services of all types of organic production system that are currently feasible

SCOPE OF WORK

TanCert provides certification services in Organic production systems to various products including apiary, crops and livestocks for EU and domestic market.

Inspection

TanCert has developed expertise in carrying out inspections and audits of production systems for compliance to organic standards and other environmentally sustainable production standards. TanCert provides inspection and audit services to:EU Regulation, NOP, JAS, UTZ Certified, Global GAP, Social standards and Fair trade, Rain forest alliance, BioSuisse...