The practice of alternating the species or families of annual and/ or biennial crops grown on a specific field
in a planned pattern or sequence so as to break weed/pest and disease cycles and to improve soil fertility
and organic matter is called crop rotation. Planting the same crop in the same location time after time
(mono cropping) encourages the build up of diseases and pests that plague that particular crop. Crop
rotation helps in overcoming this problem without the use of any chemicals.
Organic Labelling and Certification
The growing demand for organic food has led to the imitation of a process for developing their ‘own’
standards by different countries. The US and the European Union have already announced
comprehensive National Organic Programmes. Japan, Canada and Australia have national standards for
organic products in practice since early nineties. New Zealand, Isreal and Brazil have almost attained the
equivalency status with the standards of the European Union and the USA.
Certain very large organic food markets such as the United States present particular problems for
exporters because of the rigid requirements for labelling. In the US, products are accepted as organic only
if they conform to US Department of Agriculture (USDA) requirements, which are fairly stringent and require
, which can be costly and cumbersome for exporters from poor countries.