Ensuring On-farm Food Safety through Good Agricultural Practices: A Review

With food-borne illnesses increasing every year and e-commerce operations reaching every location globally, ensuring food safety is of paramount importance. In India, 16 per cent of the total disease outbreaks are reported to be food-related emphasising the significance. While On-Farm Food Safety (OFFS) practices ensure food safety, many complexities are involved in bringing them to the forefront among farmers due to underreporting of food-borne illness, small and scattered farms, lack of evidence in linking illness to food consumed etc. Tackling OFFS requires farmers to adopt Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) that address environmental, economic and social sustainability. India also offers a certification scheme, IndGAP, to individual and group farmers that requires farmers to follow GAPs. Though the scheme is available, its adoption among farmers is yet to be ascertained due to a lack of data. Implementation of GAPs by farmers reportedly reduces the consumption of plant protection chemicals thereby reducing the cost of cultivation. As compliance with various such practices that ensure food safety is required, the food produced by the farmers following GAPs will be much safer than otherwise. Evidence also suggests that both small and large farmers have similar levels of knowledge on various GAPs and thereby any farmer can implement them with handholding support from the governments. As most of the landholdings in India are small and marginal, Farmer Producer Organisations should be leveraged to train the farmers in the adoption of GAPs. More research on OFFS practices adoption levels, cost and return analysis and improving the regulations and compliance in the policy landscape of food safety are essential to ensure food produced is safe to consume.