IOBC Certification Opens Markets

IOBC Certification Opens Markets. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Each year since the late 1990’s the International Organization for Biological Control or IOBC has awarded an official international endorsement of its independent, third-party sustainable vineyard and winery certification program to the LIVE program. LIVE stands for “Low Input Viticulture and Enology” and is the certification of limiting raw material inputs including pesticides, fertilizer, water, chemicals and fuel used in vineyard and winery production. Chris Serra, executive director of LIVE says even though the U.S. really doesn’t recognize the IOBC, the rest of the world does.

SERRA: It means a great deal to us. We’re very close partners with the IOBC. It’s pretty important that we keep this connection with LIVE and IOBC strong and maybe raise a little bit more awareness about what they do in the states because it’s pretty impressive work and very important work.

Serra describes how LIVE works.

SERRA: LIVE certification is wine/grape certification but we are a whole farms certification and what that means is that we have a partner called Salmon Safe that we do a dual inspection of LIVE and Salmon Safe when theirs a vineyard with let’s say an apple orchard or hazelnut orchard or something like that. Other crops or landscaping are inspected under Salmon Safe standards so if there is farm that has both or multiple crops then they can get LIVE on the grapes and Salmon Safe on the everything else and IOBC across the board.

Bottom line for producers is the ability to sell their products on the export market with very little problems.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.