TRAINING MATERIAL – Using Premium Organic Principles

Version 2.0
Year 2023

TRAINING MATERIAL
Using Premium Organic Principles - Training Manual

1
PAGE |
 TRAINING MATERIAL – Using Premium Organic Principles
Version 2.0
Year 2023
FOR FARMER USAGE

What is Organic?

Organic means things that are natural. Organic foods, such as cashews, are grown without
chemical fertilizers or pesticides which are harmful to people and the environment.

Why organic?
Organic practices make cashew farms healthy and more productive.
1. Safety
- Chemical fertilizers and pesticides can be harmful to health for farmers, their
families, farm workers, and consumers.
- Chemicals kill good organisms that help the cashew tree, kill the soil of the farm,
and can poison water in the community

2. Cost Saving
- Fewer inputs will have to be purchased for organic cashew farming, meaning less
cost to farmers and more money in your pocket!
- Expensive chemicals or fertilizers are NOT allowed on organic cashew farms – you
will not be able to get higher prices.

3. Higher Yields & Better Quality

- Using Organic Good Agriculture Practices (GAP) is a natural way to give nutrients
and food that your cashew farm needs.
- This make your cashew trees produce much more nuts and keep the soils healthy
for many years;

4. More Profit
- Higher yield = more income
- You can also get a better price for certified organic cashew
- Together, these two factors can increase your profits while protecting yourself, your
family and your farm

Premium Organic

You can get a higher price for high-quality cocoa grown with organic principles. You must
use strict organic and quality principles!

2
PAGE |
 TRAINING MATERIAL – Using Premium Organic Principles
Version 2.0
Year 2023
DO DON’T
DO use the principles in this manual to DO NOT USE chemical fertilizers;
produce more high-quality Cashew. NO NPK; NO DAP

DO take good care of your farm, use DO NOT USE chemical for pest and
under brushing, pruning; disease control;
NO chemical fungicides
Regularly trim and prune of trees NO chemical herbicides
improves plan health and less pests and NO chemical pesticides
diseases.
DO NOT spray chemicals on seedlings,
DO NOT use inorganic chemicals leaves, or surrounding soil;

>• Keep drinking water clean
>• Keep soils healthy
>• Keep the forest healthy
>• Keep people healthy
DO NOT store cashews near fuel;
chemicals, diesel, insecticide, or any
other un-natural product!
DO NOT burn cashew leaves

Know the difference: ORGANIC vs Chemical

ORGANIC
YOU can make organic fertilizer from cow manure and compost.

CHEMICAL – NO

3
PAGE |
 TRAINING MATERIAL – Using Premium Organic Principles
Version 2.0
Year 2023

FIELD MAINTENANCES

Pruning and thinning branches that mixed each other;

Cleaning plantation: no plastic or fertilizer sacks

containers like boxes, buckets, etc

Collect all leaves to trees and put around tree and later
can be organic fertilizer in long rum

Before harvesting

It is important to weed the area under the trees clean, ahead of harvesting. This will facilitate
the picking of fruits (apples and nuts). no plastic or fertilizer sacks containers like boxes,
buckets, etc

Nut harvesting

1. Allow fruits to drop to the ground before picking.

2. In Cambodia, collect fruits daily basic

Handling of nuts

1. Neatly detach the apple completely from the nut, using a nylon thread or sharp knife.
The quality of the nut is affected when the apple is not neatly detached from the nut.
2. Remove and discard immature, green, diseased, shrivelled and damaged nuts along
with any foreign matter.

4
PAGE |
 TRAINING MATERIAL – Using Premium Organic Principles
Version 2.0
Year 2023

FOR FIELD OFFICER USAGE

Organic Product: any commercial edible product without presence of any hazardous
chemical to compromise human health.

 In order to preserve the organic nature, precautionary measures must be followed in the
manufacturing of organic product. This can be achieved by setting up the so- called
Internal Control System (ICS), regardless of how large or small, throughout all stages of
transformation from raw material to final product. In our case, Raw Cashew Nut (RCN) to
Kernel. Stages involved are;

RCN Source  Processing  Importer  consumer.

Each previous stage will crucially affect the subsequent one. Organic nature will be
compromised if there is no ICS in place. ICS team is tasked to safeguard the organic nature
of the RCN source, the very first stage in the production of the final kernels. So, it is
IMPERATIVE that we must STRICTLY AND CONSISTENTLY implement our ICS.

ICS Management:

 Management of Plantation: Throughout the year, our field officers work closely with our
farmers, routinely visit their plantations, inquisitively investigate into any potential
problems that could compromise the organic nature of RCN, advise our farmers on good
organic farming practices and coordinate uncontaminated RCN deliveries to our
operation team at the final transit point. All issues, major or minor, should be reported by
our field officers in a timely fashion to our ICS operation manager so that they can
properly be documented.

 Operation Transit Point in plance: Our ICS Operation manager oversees the smooth
operations in various departments at this transit point during the cashew season. All
incoming RCN deliveries are identified by their corresponding farmer numbers,
individually weighed, QC checked and temporarily isolated from one another before
being confirmed okay to be packed in new bags and dispatched to processing facilities.

 Documentations: All annual formal documentations such as FO Training, Internal

Inspection Checklist, Farmer Training, Farmer Diary, CRN, CTN, MTN and Annual
Report are organized and completed by our documentation team during off-season.

Management of Organic Cashew Plantation:

A field officer should make great effort to frequently interact with the farmers. He must
diligently visit the latter’s plantations, listen to their concerns related to organic farming
practices and give them good advice on how to solve their problems at hand. It is mandatory
at ICS Operators that field officers set up farmer group training sessions at separate villages
twice a year, a few months apart from each other. All the farmers under each field officer’s

5
PAGE |
 TRAINING MATERIAL – Using Premium Organic Principles
Version 2.0
Year 2023
watch, divided in various numbers in groups, are obliged to participate in training. In doing so,
they gain the most up-to-date knowledge regarding organic farming and thereby can
efficiently and professionally manage their own plantations for organic compliance.

Field officers can certainly train our registered farmers how to comply with the exact criteria
listed in Section 3 of the present training materials on which they themselves base in their
own inspections of plantations. In addition, the former can also encourage the latter not to
practice the traditional burning of dead leaves within the cashew plantations. In fact, dead
leaves are very useful when turned into compost which is a natural organic fertilizer.
Contrarily, burning dead leaves creates fume that does not dissipate quickly into the open air
but is trapped inside the cashew plantation raising air temperature within. This scenario
adversely affects the healthy growth of the cashew trees. Potential fire hazard in the cashew
plantation is also another reason why burning leaves does not sound a good idea.

Organic Plantation Inspection

A field officer should regularly carry out the inspections of the plantations under his watch.
Our objective is to cover 100% of our registered plantations annually. One should neither
presume nor take it for granted that our traditionally organic plantations will always remain
organic. Proofs of otherwise may arise because of possible violations to organic rules,
whether be intentional or unintentional, on the part of our farmers. Nevertheless, we can
certainly preserve the organic nature of our registered plantations by adhering to our field
officers’ regular inspection program, In performing inspection of a plantation, a field officer
should always exercise his good judgement and report his findings to the ICS operation
manager for documentation.

The following is a field officer’s main checking points:

 Overall cleanness and tidiness of each plantation;

 Presence of chemical used on trunks and leaves of cashew trees;
 Potential use of chemical herbicide in weed removal. Only manual weed removal is
allowed;
 Contamination of RCN storage area: No chemical of any sort and equipment used in
application of chemical pesticide or herbicide are allowed.
 Possible contamination of water if used on cashew trees: water from well and rain is
allowed;
 Presence of any intercrop and new parallel cashew planting since last inspection: If yes,
identify what crop and what species and record information for documentation;
 Presence of animal husbandry: Ox and chicken are okay

Pest Control and Organic Fertilizer

Historically, our registered cashew plantations rarely have the problem of pest. There exists
some worm like parasites which feed on leaves but not trunk of a cashew tree. However, a
field officer should encourage the farmers to be vigilant. They must bring to our attention in
case there is an outburst of a new species of pest in their plantations instead of blindly and

6
PAGE |
 TRAINING MATERIAL – Using Premium Organic Principles
Version 2.0
Year 2023
immediately using a commercial pesticide. We will seek professional opinion and advice to
help them solve the problem.
Most types of Chemicals are banned in organic farming with only a few exceptions. The
existing commercial fertilizers on the market may contain such banned chemical and are
therefore deemed not suitable for organic farming. We should encourage our farmers to use
natural fertilizers such as cow dung, chicken feces, dead leaves and/or compost. They are
organic!

Literacy rate in most farming communities throughout plantantion is very low. It is unlikely
farmers would read and comprehend a label on any commercial product in detail. We need to
speak a language that our registered farmers understand
“Never use commercial pesticide and fertilizer!!!”.

Preventive Measures Against Contamination

An organic produce at harvest time right from the field could become inorganic if not properly
handled. This is the result of contamination through contacts of chemical. A field officer
should guide farmers how to well maintain the organic nature of their yields by preventive
measures against contamination of chemical.

The following is some preventive measures farmers can be adopted at harvest time:

 Packing: Use new PP bags provided company to pack RCN only. Used bags could
probably be contaminated already with other chemical.

 Storage free of chemical: Should at times temporary storage of RCN is required before
the delivery of the cargo, farmers should ascertain that their storage areas are
exclusively for RCN. No other items are allowed to be found, especially pesticide,
herbicide and contaminated farming equipment.

Transport: Normally, RCN cargos are picked up by the designated trucks. When farmers
need to transport their cargos themselves, they should make great efforts to keep their
motorbikes clean and free of leaking motor oil, especially the rack where cargos are placed.

7
PAGE |