New topic guidelines created by the GLOBALG.A.P. US National Technical Working Group (NTWG) aim to support producers and other stakeholders in understanding certification criteria. The resources explain how to meet the principles and criteria in key GLOBALG.A.P. standards, including Integrated Farm Assurance (IFA), the Harmonized Produce Safety Standard (HPSS), and Produce Handling Assurance (PHA).
What are the topic guidelines?
This project from the US NTWG is designed to make complex topics more approachable for producers in a format made by the industry, for the industry. The resources tackle common topics important for onboarding new producers who are not familiar with certification, both generally and through GLOBALG.A.P. standards.
The topic guidelines also support consistency in how standards are understood by stakeholders including producers, certification bodies, and buyers. They aim to help shift the perspective of audits from a burdensome annual exercise to a regular opportunity to ensure process improvements and business continuity.
As each guideline is developed, it will be added to the GLOBALG.A.P. document center for public access. Each topic will be addressed using the general format: What, why, when, action steps, documents, key takeaways, examples, and templates, as appropriate.
Which US NTWG guidelines are available?
Why these topics?
The first document addresses the topic of mass balance. The NTWG developed a comprehensive guide on what mass balance is in the GLOBALG.A.P. system, why it is important to a producer’s certification, and the documents needed for audit action steps. It provides concrete examples to learn from – all in a quick-read format. While producers may generally prefer to download and fill-in templates, topics like mass balance – which are farm and context specific – cannot fit neatly into one template, so a user-friendly guideline can be more helpful.
Topics like mass balance may not appear in other standards but are beneficial to the producers from an operational efficiency standpoint in addition to protecting the value of their certification.
The following two documents address preharvest water risk assessment and the environmental monitoring program – both of which include templates. Developing risk assessments for these topics can be challenging, and these guidelines help simplify how to assess risk (likelihood x severity) to support decisions. Building risk assessments into operations is beneficial beyond just the audit.
Additional topics under development from the working group include biodiversity plans, farm labor contractor assessments, supplier approvals, parallel ownership, and more.
Thank you to the US NTWG!
We are grateful for the hard work of the US NTWG and other participating stakeholders and for their dedication to supporting producers with these topic guidelines. Are you interested in joining the US NTWG? Contact us at northamerica@globalgap.org.
Related links
- The GLOBALG.A.P. educational video series aims to support producers and trainers in understanding how to implement good agricultural practices in topic-specific videos.
- Learn more about the role of NTWGs and how you can get involved.
- Explore dedicated support for your operations through our Registered Trainer network.
