Organic Cotton Accelerator takes action for Farm Programme in Türkiye

The Netherlands-based multi-stakeholder organisation, OCA (The Organic Cotton Accelerator) has begun the process of launching its Farm Programme beyond India and Pakistan into Turkey. The global platform, founded in 2016 with the mission to unleash organic cotton’s full potential for positive impact, from field to fashion, seek proposals from consultants and organisations to verify multiple indicators and provide qualitative feedback. The parties are able to contact the organisation for this RFP (Request for Proposals) through to 02 March 2023.

OCA is seeking interest from third party validator (TPV) to validate data and facilitate testing of seed cotton and lint for the organic cotton projects under OCA’s Farm Programme, located primarily within Turkey. Further details about the project and exact allocations will be made available at a later stage of the selection process. For design/methodology and budgeting purposes, the following assumptions are stated: The number of initial projects should be around 3, the total number of farmers in these projects should be around 80 and the total lint commitment of each project should be around 2000 metric tons.

Organic Cotton Accelerator expands its works with feedback from Türkiye

The scope of work for the TPV covers three broad areas: data collection and validation; Sampling, testing & reporting and suggesting improvements to OCA’s monitored organic cotton projects.

Data collection and validation include creating a detailed work plan for project visits, data collection analysis and reporting. It is expected that the visits to the projects will be scheduled at critical stages of the cotton season to collect relevant data and facilitate sampling and testing of the seed cotton and lint. It also covers interviews with the project farmers, conventional (control) farmers as well as the Implementing Partners (IPs) to gather quantitative data and qualitative information as detailed by the OCA secretariat; Conducting process validation and Submission of Results Report Dashboard.

Sampling, testing & reporting covers collating ginner level chemical residue test reports provided by the IPs in an agreed format; coordinating with the IPs and collecting samples as per the ‘Standard Operating Procedure for GMO Sampling and Testing’ (Payments of all GM tests are to be paid directly by the IP to the labs. Collection, packaging and delivering the samples to the preselected labs by OCA’s IPs is the responsibility of the TPV and the costs should be budgeted in the financial proposal); and collating and coordinating reports from labs and reporting to OCA.

In addition, it expected parties to suggest improvements in OCA’s Verification Manual and ‘Standard Operating Procedure for GMO Sampling and Testing’ through an End of Year (EOY) report, based on ground realities.