The Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) is not only locally focused, building on trust, social connections and knowledge exchange, but also encouraging or even require direct participation of farmers and consumers in the certification process. This helps reduce the load of complex paper-based tasks – streamlining operational processes for businesses. In addition, the application of the PGS system helps agribusinesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises to build trust with customers, increase sales revenue and be a tool to help businesses achieve standards. different.
No matter who you are, as a manufacturer, a carrier, or a consumer of food, you will be an essential element of the PGS system in the following ways:
You can sign up to join a production team by contacting the production team leader in your area:
Your main roles and duties in the system include:
The production group should meet the requirement of at least 5 farmer households in the same area.
The main roles and responsibilities of the production team in the system include:
You can join the system by responding to product quality through traceability stamps. Or you can choose to directly participate in the intergroup, which is the leader of the production team and external members such as consumers, traders, local officials, employees of non-governmental organizations , …
The main roles and tasks of the inter-group in the PGS system include:
The PGS system has a simple structure with 4 main “units” of farmer households, production groups, inter-groups and PGS coordination committee. The PGS Coordination Committee is composed of full-time officials, consultants, supervisors, executives and managers of major activities in the system.
Main roles and duties of PGS coordination committee:
With a streamlined structure and cross-checking involvement of many stakeholders in the quality assurance process, operating with a trust base, the PGS system helps improve the autonomy and responsibility of producers. . They need to manage themselves, be honest throughout the process as well as respect the nature and health of consumers.
Stay tuned for the EFD project to better understand the PGS system as well as how to apply it.
References:
1. Technical documentation on PGS systems to participate in quality assurance by Rikolto / VECO in Vietnam and PGS Coordinating Committee of Vietnam.
2. PGS – Vietnam brochure of IFOAM
3. PGS – Operation manual for producers, ADDA and Vietnam Farmers Association, 2009