• The adaptation of ISO 9000 and 14000 standards in agriculture.

Several strategies have been adopted in agriculture to implement ISO 9000 & 14000 Standard in agriculture. The one chosen in the Quali’Terre is based on a progressive two steps approach. First, farmers have to reach a common level defined by a regional good farming practices guidelines called Quali’Terre, before going further in the implementation of an individual management system based on ISO standards.

At both steps, the methodology developed aims to involve individual farmers in a continuous improvement process, and the Deming wheel. The common requirements defined by the first step of Quali’Terre include both agronomic reasoning and more general farm management rules. The farmers are then progressively introduced to the logic and the architecture of quality or environmental management systems which can fit with the requirements of ISO standards.

• The design of the auditing system : the role of advisory and extension services

In order to reduce auditing and certification costs, while at the same time maintaining its credibility and its fiability, the Quali’Terre guideline is completed by an auditing protocol which involves local agricultural advisors and an independent certifying body. This organisation may help to realise scale economies and improve preliminary advises to farmers than 100 farms demonstrate that the need for advises were related to organisational problems, and especially information management in farms.

• The Quali’Terre guideline : an adaptation of the HACCP methodology

Contrasting with many good farming practices recommendations focusing on one specific production (beef, potato,….), the Quali’Terre methodology is based on a global approach of quality and environmental management at the farm level, including all production systems. This global approach is defining a base for other productions.

The Quali’Terre guideline is based on an application of the HACCP methodology to theanalys is of quality or environmental risks in alternative crop and breeding farming systems. A group of scientific experts identified the main regional quality and environmental problems, and define the more suitable solutions that can be proposed in this regional context. These solutions must be considered as preventive actions and were then gathered in the Quali’Terre guideline. It includes criteria like environment, food safety, work safety, animal welfare, information management, and landscape dimensions.

• Towards individual quality management systems in farms…

Instead of applying directly the specifications defined by the ISO 9000 and 14000 standards, the strategy preferred here was to translate preventive actions into a good farming practices guideline in order to facilitate its appropriation by farmers.

Table 1 : A framework for the analysis of potential hazards in farming systems

The specified preventive actions were classified into two levels : Major requirements (level A), including regulatory practices, and minor requirements (level B). The farmers must implement 100 % of the level A requirements and 80 % of the level B requirements.
Thus, contrasting with regulatory instruments that must be applied by all the farms, individual farmers can define their own priorities (level B) depending of their own situations. One of the major difficulty here relies to the fact that farmers have to comply to all the requirements at the farm level, and not anymore for only one specific production as usually required.