PRODUCTION of honey from the North-Western Province of Zambia has gone up with an estimated export crop of 400 tonnes involving 3000 bark hive producers in the 2003/4 season.

According to the organic Producers and Association of Zambia (OPPAZ) the last few years have seen numerous successes in the organic field with some of the producers of honey being certified by the Soil Association of Zambia under the umbrella of the North-Western Bee keepers Association. Organic certification is done by Ecocert which is the French certification body.

OPPAZ says that commercial agriculture has been producing certified organic vegetables for export and is now beginning to export essential oils using the out grower schemes.

There is a growing interest in organically wild harct such as manjeti (mongongo) nut oil, baobab oil and fruit, marula oil and mpundu (parinari curatellifolia) nut oil.

Organically certified wild harvest mushrooms have been exported from Mpongwe for a number of years, says OPPAZ.

In 2002, groundnuts were the first small holder dry land crop ready for the organic export market but a very high local price inhibited exports. The prediction is that the 2003/4 crop yield is bound to be substantial.

Currently, there are about 600 small scale producers in six different projects around Zambia who are certified organic while some are in the process of certification.

Most of the crops are from dry land including groundnuts, sunflower, green gram, sesame and soya. The size of the market is still being research by OPPAZ.

OPPAZ is also undertaking a research on alternative market opportunities for small grains such as millet and sorghum since the traditional market is limited.

This discourages farmers to grow surplus yield despite them being suitable for drought prone yield areas.

OPPAZ recently helped a group of farmers get accreditation to exhibit at the Fair Trade thus giving individual farmers the advantage of both organic and fair trading premium in the international market.

The organic certification of small scale producers involves the delegation of 100 per cent farm inspections to an internal control system.

External training in the setting up of the internal control was facilitated by OPPAZ in order to reduce the certification costs.

The ICS is a better marketing tool since it was good record keeping requirements and gives the ability to forecast the coming season's crop for large groups of farmers.

Meanwhile, there are enormous opportunities in the production of organic seed although for the time being organic farmers can use non-organic seed only if they would prove that no organic seed is available.