1. What is Global Gap?

GLOBALGAP is a private sector body that sets voluntary standards for the certification of agricultural products around the globe. The GLOBALGAP standard is primarily designed to reassure consumers about how food is produced on the farm by minimizing detrimental environmental impacts of farming operations, reducing the use of chemical inputs and ensuring a responsible approach to worker health and safety as well as animal welfare.

GLOBALGAP serves as a practical manual for Good Agricultural Practice (GAP) anywhere in the world. The basis is an equal partnership of agricultural producers and retailers who wish to establish efficient certification standards and GLOBALGAP is a single integrated standard with modular applications for different product groups, ranging from plant and livestock production to plant propagation materials and compound feed manufacturing.

The standard serves as a global reference system for other existing standards and can also easily and directly be applied by all parties of the primary food sector. In other words: GLOBALGAP operates like a satellite navigation system. It equips members with a reliable tool kit, which allows each partner in the supply chain to position themselves in a global market with respect to consumer requirements.

A number of trade shows where product information is shared with other stakeholders are held on an annual basis, regional and international. One of the basic prerequisites for these shows to work for you is that your products be global gap certified.

The world has become sophisticated and everything people use, especially consumers, must be able to be traced back. For e.g If a consumer buys a product in the United States of America, which was made in Swaziland, the labels on the packaging material should have all the relevant information. It should state when the product was planted, fertilizers used, sprays and chemicals - if any - and when they were used, when it was harvested as well as when it was packed. This looks tedious and it is, but necessary.

Once the global gap certificate has been attained, audits are done at anytime by the regulatory body. This is done to ensure that what your product says it is, it really is. This is not the end, but even the place where the products are planted and packed has to be certified. This will be in terms of hygiene (e.g, availability of on-site clean toilets) and cleanliness.

Most people confuse global gap with higher prices, that is, they think that once you have been certified you can charger higher prices than the one who hasn't been. That is not very true. Yes, global gap opens up many markets for you, but it is not an assurance for higher prices. In most European countries, certain products are not allowed unless they are certified. So the benefits of global gap are:

Sharing the food production guidelines with growers, food producers and retailers – specifying how food is grown and what was used to produce it – is an important contribution to the harmonization needed to achieve clear and transparent processes. This will give farmers several benefits:

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