Factors that May Lead on the Non-renewal of Certified Organic Product According to Organic Producers in Brazil

Abstract: The regulatory process of the organic sector in Brazil began in 1999 and has gone through several changes, culminating in the Decree-Law of December 2007, which established rules for the production and trading of organic products in Brazil. In such Decree, the certification has become a compulsory requirement for production and trading of such products, whose rules governing their obtaining follow rigorous controls standards. As the certification process of organic products is recent and there is a lack of studies carried on this subject, this study will contribute to fill the existing gap in the international literature, mainly national about this topic, once that aimed to identify factors that influence the possibility of non-renewal of organic production certificate, according to the perception of certified producers in Brazil. Through this effort, this research should contribute to wider adherence and maintenance of the producer in the certified system or, at least, proposals for further works. A total of 200 producers from several Brazilian states participated in this study, and data analysis was performed using descriptive statistics and, later, exploratory factor analysis. The results achieved holds that the determining factors to the non-renewal of the certificate involve variables related to transactions among operators, organization of the supply chain and to the regulations. Furthermore, to overcome the challenges imposed to rural producers, one of the proposals is for greater effective actions from representative industry entities of the sector in aspects that are related to the certification process.