As part of SIZA’s drive to support producers by providing a cost-effective approach toward third-party audits, taking into account the various markets that are supplied globally, SIZA has investigated some of the major benchmarks and agreements completed to understand the cost-benefit and savings to the producer and the industry at large.
Similarly, the benchmarks against the Floriculture Sustainability Initiative and Rainforest Alliance save the industry approximately R180 000 and R2 208 900, respectively. It is clear that engagements with partners such as Sedex and GLOBALG.A.P. provide visibility to producers supplying markets in the UK and EU, resulting in a cost saving of +/- R5 000 per producer per audit. This translates to a saving of R9 263 552 for the industry for Sedex and R6 030 000 for GLOBALG.A.P. visibility.
The goal of maintaining partnerships with other global programmes and conducting benchmarks against other standards is to ensure that South African agricultural producers can access all the major global markets by only maintaining their SIZA compliance for both the Social and Environmental Standards.
