30 September 2021 Trevignano Romano, Rome, Italy

WAHF helped the Chongming Island in Shanghai in strengthening sustainable rice value chain

by setting up a Voluntary Sustainability Standard

The World Agricultural Heritage Forum (WAHF) approved the registration of a Voluntary Sustainability Standard (VSS) on 1 September 2021, submitted by the Shanghai Chongming Ecological Agriculture Science Innovation Center, to improve the sustainable rice value chain and the application of the national agricultural heritage in China.

The VSS titled “Green Sustainable Agriculture Standard for Rice (No-Chemical Synthetic Pesticides and Fertilizers)”, as a key output of local counterpart project that WAHF provided technical support to the FAO TCP project (TCP/CPR/3702), is also a nationally recognized community standard registered and managed by the local authority in Shanghai, which contains good practices and technical specifications from the FAO TCP project on Chongming Island. It also can support Chongming to apply the national agricultural heritage system in China, and provide a general standard framework to support sustainability and voluntary guidelines of “non-chemical synthetic pesticides and fertilizers” in sustainable agricultural value chains (in particular rice) for developing countries.

(For more info please see the WAHF standard on the Chinese National Platform on VSS.)

Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) are rules developed by single businesses, business associations, environmental or social non-governmental organizations, or governments at local, national or international level on environmental and social improvements. In the agricultural sector, VSS promotes sustainability along the value chain, and they define criteria to be met by the certified organization or product, often resulting in an identifiable label for consumers.