Standards and Certification

The standards and certification arm of KOAN main objective is to develop affordable and relevant services acceptable at national, regional and internal level. Enabling farmers, especially small scale farmers to access organic market through certification is our key goal.
 
Certified organic production in Kenya has been growing steadily especially in the past ten year, earlier most of the certified organic products were mainly targeting export markets. However in the past five years certified products targeting national markets has been growing steadily.
The development of East Africa Organic Standards  and East Africa Organic Mark further posses an opportunity for the development of the organic sector in the region.

KOAN approach to organic quality assurence is market driven and multifaceted. This implies that while we recognises third party certification as the most authetic and internationally recognised means of organic quality assurence, we encourage other approaches which works for local situations and enables small scale farmers to access organic markets and help improves livelihood. These approaches include a agroup certification through ICS, PGS and Risk Based Quality Management. KOAN also work with other quality systems that are complimentary to organic e.g Fair Trade, Forest Certification Schemes, Utz Kapeh.

There are various ways of assuring organic quality standards are met for details click here.

There is a wide range of organic certified products in Kenya,for information on  organic certifed producers and products, click here.

The East African Region has development a common organic product standard to facilitate regional trade. To view the Standard click here.