Certification landscape
Reference page. This is an orientation summary, not legal advice — verify against the primary instruments linked at the bottom.
Contents
| Authority | SENASA, per art. 5 of Ley 29196 |
|---|---|
| Framework law | Ley 29196 (2008) |
| Technical reg. | RTPO — D.S. 044-2006-AG |
| Registry of CBs | D.S. 061-2006-AG |
| Later amendment | D.S. 002-2020-MINAGRI |
| SGP recognition | Ley 30983 (2019) |
| Registered | 11 certification bodies, 4 SGPs |
1. The Peruvian stack
Organic production in Peru sits on Ley N° 29196, Ley de Promoción de la Producción Orgánica o Ecológica, which names SENASA (Servicio Nacional de Sanidad Agraria) as the national supervising authority. Below it sit the technical regulation D.S. 044-2006-AG (the RTPO), the registry decree D.S. 061-2006-AG establishing the national register of certification bodies, and later modifications including D.S. 002-2020-MINAGRI.[1]
1.1 RTPO and the national organic seal
Certification under the RTPO is what legally permits a product to be marketed as orgánico, ecológico or biológico in Peruvian territory, including imported product. Scope covers plant production, animal production, beekeeping, wild harvest, processing and marketing.[2] Compliant producers may use the Sello Nacional de Producción Orgánica.[3]
Certification is performed by organismos de certificación authorised and registered by SENASA — currently eleven, alongside four registered SGPs.[4] That registry is important to this project: it is a state-maintained, public list of the entities entitled to make the claim, which is exactly the root of trust an attestation chain needs. See key hierarchy.
1.2 Sistema de Garantía Participativo (SGP)
The SGP is the most interesting instrument in the Peruvian stack and the reason this project is plausible here rather than somewhere else.
Instead of one accredited company auditing a farm, an SGP builds the guarantee out of direct relationships among producer organisations, consumers, and public and private institutions in a region — peer visits, shared records, and a regional council that makes the certification decision. It is designed for family agriculture, where the third-party model's cost structure does not fit.[5]
Ley N° 30983 amended Ley 29196 specifically to develop certification of organic products produced by small producers, and the SGP route is valid for product commercialised on the domestic market.[6] SENASA has promoted regional SGP councils, including under the Segunda Reforma Agraria.[7]
An SGP council is a legitimate certifier under Peruvian law, operates at a cost a smallholder can bear, and produces decisions that are rich in local context and illegible outside it. A signing key turns a council decision into something a shopper 900 km away can check. Nothing else in the stack has that gap-and-fit shape.
1.3 Sello BPA — Buenas Prácticas Agrícolas
Distinct from organic: BPA certifies good agricultural practice — safe and controlled agrochemical use, hygiene, traceability, worker conditions — not the absence of synthetic inputs. SENASA's BPA certification is voluntary and free of charge; roughly 1,200 predios had been certified at the time of reporting, against more than 65,000 producers trained through SENASA's Escuelas de Campo and projected toward certification.[8]
BPA matters here for a practical reason: it is free and state-run, which
makes it the cheapest possible first attestation for a producer who is not
organic-certified and may never be. A protocol that can only carry
orgánico serves a small minority of Peruvian farms. One that can carry
bpa, libre-de-pesticidas, and
en-transicion as first-class claims serves many more.
2. Export-facing regimes
| Scheme | Certifies | Mechanism | Relevance here |
|---|---|---|---|
| EU organic Reg. 2018/848 |
Organic production and processing for the EU market | In force since Jan 2022; moved third countries from equivalence to compliance. Each consignment needs a Certificate of Inspection issued through TRACES.[9] | The COI is already a structured electronic object tied to a consignment — conceptually the closest existing thing to what we are building, but state-to-state and invisible to shoppers. |
| USDA NOP + SOE rule |
Organic production for the US market | Mutual recognition with EU organic, with carve-outs. The Strengthening Organic Enforcement rule added electronic import certificates, tighter recordkeeping and stronger certifier oversight.[10] | SOE is an explicit institutional admission that paper traceability was the weak point. Same diagnosis, different remedy. |
| GLOBALG.A.P. | Good agricultural practice, buyer-facing | Covers traceability, controlled agrochemical use, environmental protection, hygiene and working conditions.[11] | B2B by construction — a shopper has never heard of it. Illustrates how far certification has drifted from the person paying the premium. |
| Fairtrade | Price floor, premium, and organisational terms | Standards for small-scale producer organisations, with published adaptations for organic under EU 2018/848.[12] | The only major scheme whose subject is the split itself. Directly analogous to the commercial terms this protocol puts inside the contract. |
3. Private and voluntary schemes
Beyond the above there is a long tail: Rainforest Alliance, Bird Friendly,
Demeter/biodynamic, kosher and halal, individual retailer programmes, and
exporter-specific supplier codes. The protocol does not enumerate them. Any
scheme with (a) an identifiable issuing body and (b) a definable scope can be
carried, because the attestation format is
scheme-agnostic — the
standard field is a string with a registry behind it, not an enum
baked into the code.
Carrying a scheme is not endorsing it. A wallet decides which issuers it trusts, and the default trust set for Peru is intended to be exactly SENASA's published registry. A private scheme that is not in that registry verifies cryptographically and displays as unrecognised issuer. That distinction has to survive into the UI or the whole thing is decorative.
4. On cost
The figure repeatedly cited in the PGS literature for conventional third-party organic certification is up to USD 2,500 per year per operation.[5] Two caveats we will keep attached to it everywhere on this wiki:
- It is a comparative figure from the PGS advocacy literature, not a Peruvian price list. Real quotes vary by certifier, crop, area, and whether the operation certifies as a group.
- Group certification via an internal control system already reduces per-farm cost substantially for cooperatives, which is how most Peruvian organic coffee is certified at all. The wall is highest for the unaffiliated smallholder selling domestically — who is precisely the SGP's target and ours.
Getting a defensible Peruvian cost curve is open question OQ-3.
5. How each maps into the protocol
| Scheme | standard |
Issuer key held by | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| RTPO organic | pe.rtpo.organico |
SENASA-registered certification body | Baseline case. Issuer must appear in the SENASA registry mirror. |
| RTPO via SGP | pe.rtpo.organico.sgp |
Regional SGP council | Domestic market only, per Ley 30983. Wallet must display that scope limit rather than hide it. |
| In transition | pe.rtpo.transicion |
Certification body or SGP council | Explicitly not organic. Carrying it honestly is more useful than omitting it. |
| Sello BPA | pe.senasa.bpa |
SENASA directly | Free, state-issued. Likely the highest-volume attestation in a pilot. |
| Pesticide-free lot | pe.libre-pesticidas |
SGP council or lab | Lot-scoped, not farm-scoped; may reference a residue analysis. Weakest claim, most demand for it. |
| EU organic | eu.2018-848 |
Control body operating in Peru | Export path; a domestic wallet should treat it as informational. |
| USDA NOP | us.nop | Accredited certifying agent | As above. |
| Fairtrade terms | fairtrade.spo |
Fairtrade certifier | Interacts with the split disclosure rather than with the produce claim. |
See also: Attestation format · Protocol overview · Glossary
References
- Ley N° 29196, Ley de Promoción de la Producción Orgánica o Ecológica. PDF, gob.pe
- SENASA, Reglamento de certificación y fiscalización de la producción orgánica. PDF, senasa.gob.pe
- SENASA, Productores ya cuentan con Sello Nacional de Producción Orgánica. senasa.gob.pe
- SENASA, registry of certification bodies and SGPs. gob.pe
- Participatory Guarantee Systems: organic certification to empower farmers and strengthen communities; and RAAA, Impulsar el SGP en el Perú. raaa.org.pe
- Ley N° 30983. El Peruano
- SENASA, II Reforma Agraria: nuevo Sistema de Garantía Participativo … en Arequipa. senasa.gob.pe
- SENASA, Sello de Buenas Prácticas Agrícolas; and Más de 65 mil productores se preparan para certificar predios en BPA. gob.pe
- European Commission, organic trade and TRACES certificates of inspection. ec.europa.eu
- USDA AMS, organic international trade & Strengthening Organic Enforcement. ams.usda.gov
- GLOBALG.A.P. scope as summarised in Peruvian agribusiness certification overviews. ESAN
- Fairtrade International, adaptations for Fairtrade organic producer organisations under EU 2018/848. PDF, fairtrade.net