What is GlobalG.A.P.?
GlobalG.A.P. (Good Agricultural Practices) is the world’s most widely recognized farm assurance program, designed to ensure safe and sustainable agricultural production globally. It aims to protect food safety, environmental sustainability, worker welfare, and ecological balance from farm to fork. It is the primary, non-regulatory but commercially essential standard sought by global retailers and brands to minimize risks in their supply chains. To meet the complex needs of modern agriculture, GlobalG.A.P. offers a variety of sub-standards and add-ons tailored to the specific demands of farmers and the market.
Key GlobalG.A.P. Standards and Modules
The ecosystem consists of modules that can be customized based on your business goals. The technical framework can be summarized as follows:
IFA Smart (Integrated Farm Assurance - Smart): This is the innovative, data-driven, and flexible edition of IFA Version 6. Processes are simplified, redundancies are eliminated, and it is fully digitized. It is tailored for markets that do not strictly require GFSI (Global Food Safety Initiative) benchmarking, providing a modern solution for producers adopting international good agricultural practices.
IFA GFS (Integrated Farm Assurance - GFSI Benchmarked): This edition of IFA v6 is officially benchmarked and recognized by the GFSI, meeting the highest demands of the world's largest supermarket chains and global buyers. It involves stricter auditing and risk management rules regarding food safety requirements.
GRASP (GLOBALG.A.P. Risk Assessment on Social Practice): This is the most common add-on for social compliance, focusing on worker health, safety, welfare, and representation. By assessing whether farm workers have fair and legal working conditions, it protects brands against social risks in the supply chain.
SPRING (Sustainable Program for Irrigation and Groundwater Use): An add-on developed to combat water scarcity and poor water management risks in agriculture. It verifies that a farm uses groundwater and surface water legally, efficiently, and sustainably, ensuring that water consumption is monitored and sources are protected.
CoC (Chain of Custody): Ensures the secure traceability of a certified product from the moment it leaves the farm until it reaches the retail shelf (covering processors, packers, brokers, etc.). It is a transparent tracking system that prevents GlobalG.A.P. certified products from being mixed with non-certified conventional products.
CfP (Crops for Processing): Designed for crops grown not for fresh consumption, but to be frozen, canned, juiced, baked, or used for animal feed. Because the ultimate food safety "kill step" (e.g., pasteurization, freezing) occurs at the processing facility, this standard eliminates duplicated food safety efforts at the farm level, saving the producer time and money.
Why Choose GlobalG.A.P. Certification with ETKO?
At a time when expectations for sustainability and food safety in the agricultural supply chain are at an all-time high, ETKO’s internationally accredited auditing expertise is your strongest assurance. Whether you need IFA GFS for fresh produce exports, CfP for crops meant for processing, or modules like SPRING and GRASP for water and labor management, ETKO manages these processes meticulously under one roof, preparing your products for the global market.