A Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) is a complementary system to organic certification by external agencies. It is a farmer group initiative based on trust and credibility and costs less than third-party certification. PGS also involves marketing directly from the producer to the consumer.

Maralawadi was selected as the location of the central committee, and farmers were given the guidelines for administration, selection of farms, field representatives in each cluster, guidelines for documentation, village-level committee for PGS and central committee formation. Regular meetings are conducted at Maralawadi on the 16th of every month to discuss the PGS system. A few farmers are selected for the PGS group, with a minimum number of members required in each group. Finalization of the PGS members list, farmer registration, an action plan for the field representatives, application formats, PGS member registration, and the roles and responsibilities of the field representatives are discussed in the meeting.

Two groups have been formed—one at Thally and the other at Maralawadi—with 25 members in each group. A total of 57 farmers form the PGS group. Four field representatives are selected by the group to monitor field activities. Farmers are registered as members through registration forms submitted to the central committee. Registered farmers meet once every three months at the central committee office. They are enrolled as members upon agreeing to follow organic farming practices and take the pledge. There is no registration fee for membership. Field representatives visit PGS members' fields to observe their farming practices and submit their reports to central office. Field representatives and field managers of GREEN Foundation are responsible for maintaining field-level documents like field visit reports, field maps, etc.

PGS Farmers List (April 2008 – March 2009)

The PGS Organic India Council (PGSOIC) meeting was organised by GREEN Foundation at Fireflies, Bangalore on June 1st and 2nd 2009. The PGS has decided to register itself as a separate legal entity in the form of a “Society” under Societies Registration Act, 1860 in the state of Andhra Pradesh. One representative of each of the ten different PGS Facilitation Councils in India present at the meeting would be its “Founder Members”.

PGS farmers meetings were conducted at two different places in the project area to discuss about implementation of the programme according to modified guidelines. First PGS farmer meeting was held at Kodihalli, on 29th June 2009 with the participation of 100 farmers of which 57 were women farmers and the second meeting was held at Maralawadi on 1st July 2009 with 42 farmers of which 28 were women farmers to discuss following issues.

1. PGS introduction to new groups
2. PGS implementation guidelines
3. Marketing linkages for organic products
4. Action plan for the programme implementation



Dr. CSP Patil, Executive director, GREEN Foundation explained the importance of organic farming in the present day circumstance and introduction of PGS and its advantages over third party certification.

Sl.No Place Date No. of groups participated Total no. of farmers Women Men 1 SM Krishna Community Hall, Kodihalli 29/06/2009 14 100 57 43 2 Maralawadi Field office 01/07/2009 9 42 28 14

Dr. CSP Patil and Mr. Ningappa Kakol had attended PGS meeting on 3rd and 4th August 2009 organised by Timbaktu Collective, Hyderabad. On 5th August PGSOIC team visited our project area Mandebaildoddi and Veeraiahanadoddi. They suggested maintaining a separate register to note the minutes of discussion on PGS and fill up the documents and send it to OFAI to get the PGS certification. Follow up trainings were conducted on field evaluation for PGS peer appraisal committee members on 20th and 21st August 2009.