GlobalG.A.P. and Add-on Modules

What is GlobalG.A.P.?

GlobalG.A.P. (Good Agricultural Practices) is the world’s most widely recognized farm assurance program, designed to ensure safe and sustainable agricultural production globally. It aims to protect food safety, environmental sustainability, worker welfare, and ecological balance from farm to fork. It is the primary, non-regulatory but commercially essential standard sought by global retailers and brands to minimize risks in their supply chains. To meet the complex needs of modern agriculture, GlobalG.A.P. offers a variety of sub-standards and add-ons tailored to the specific demands of farmers and the market.

Key GlobalG.A.P. Standards and Modules

The ecosystem consists of modules that can be customized based on your business goals. The technical framework can be summarized as follows:

• IFA Smart (Integrated Farm Assurance - Smart): This is the innovative, data-driven, and flexible edition of IFA Version 6. Processes are simplified, redundancies are eliminated, and it is fully digitized. It is tailored for markets that do not strictly require GFSI (Global Food Safety Initiative) benchmarking, providing a modern solution for producers adopting international good agricultural practices.

• IFA GFS (Integrated Farm Assurance - GFSI Benchmarked): This edition of IFA v6 is officially benchmarked and recognized by the GFSI, meeting the highest demands of the world's largest supermarket chains and global buyers. It involves stricter auditing and risk management rules regarding food safety requirements.

• GRASP (GLOBALG.A.P. Risk Assessment on Social Practice): This is the most common add-on for social compliance, focusing on worker health, safety, welfare, and representation. By assessing whether farm workers have fair and legal working conditions, it protects brands against social risks in the supply chain.

• SPRING (Sustainable Program for Irrigation and Groundwater Use): An add-on developed to combat water scarcity and poor water management risks in agriculture. It verifies that a farm uses groundwater and surface water legally, efficiently, and sustainably, ensuring that water consumption is monitored and sources are protected.

• CoC (Chain of Custody): Ensures the secure traceability of a certified product from the moment it leaves the farm until it reaches the retail shelf (covering processors, packers, brokers, etc.). It is a transparent tracking system that prevents GlobalG.A.P. certified products from being mixed with non-certified conventional products.

• CfP (Crops for Processing): Designed for crops grown not for fresh consumption, but to be frozen, canned, juiced, baked, or used for animal feed. Because the ultimate food safety "kill step" (e.g., pasteurization, freezing) occurs at the processing facility, this standard eliminates duplicated food safety efforts at the farm level, saving the producer time and money.

Who this standard is for

GLOBALG.A.P. Integrated Farm Assurance (IFA) is for primary producers and producer groups who need a recognised good-agricultural-practice certificate for crops, aquaculture, or livestock sold into retail and trade that specify GLOBALG.A.P. It is a farm-assurance / food-safety and sustainability-practice scheme. It is not an organic standard and GRASP is not included automatically.

What is certified

• IFA scopes actually applied for: plants/crops, aquaculture, and/or livestock, with the relevant product sub-scopes
• Option 1 (individual producer) or Option 2 (producer group with a quality-management system)
• Production and, where included, product-handling units (PHU) covered by the IFA checklist
• Traceability, HACCP-based hygiene, plant-protection / veterinary medicine records, and worker-health rules in IFA
• Add-on modules only when they are contracted separately (for example GRASP)

What this standard does not cover

• Organic production claims (EU, NOP, TR organic remain separate certificates)
• GRASP social assessment as an automatic part of IFA
• A chain-of-custody or brand logo that replaces farm certification for traders who never produce
• Automatic equivalence to Turkish İyi Tarım Uygulamaları (İTU)

Questions buyers and operators usually ask

Is GLOBALG.A.P. the same as organic?

No. IFA does not require organic conversion, organic seed, or the organic input lists. A farm can be GLOBALG.A.P. certified and fully conventional, or it can hold both GLOBALG.A.P. and an organic certificate. If a buyer PO says “organic + GLOBALG.A.P.”, both scopes must be certified. Do not print an organic claim on an IFA certificate.

Is GRASP included when we get IFA?

No. GRASP (GLOBALG.A.P. Risk Assessment on Social Practice) is an add-on. Many EU retailers ask for IFA plus GRASP; the audit and the letter of conformance are separate. If the buyer specified GRASP, an IFA-only certificate will fail the vendor check. Other add-ons (for example water or chain-of-custody modules) are likewise optional until contracted.

Option 1 vs Option 2—what do buyers expect?

Option 1 is one legal producer (with or without a QMS). Option 2 is a producer group: a QMS, registered members, internal inspections, and sampling of members by the certification body. A packer or exporter cannot put independent growers on its Option 1 certificate. If you sell as a group, Option 2 (or an equivalent group structure the standard allows) is the usual path.

We have İTU. Can we skip GLOBALG.A.P. for export retail?

Not automatically. İTU is the Turkish ministry GAP scheme, used mainly for the domestic market. Export retailers that name GLOBALG.A.P. IFA in the specification will not accept İTU as a substitute unless they have said so in writing. The two checklists and governance systems are different. Map the buyer’s exact scheme name before harvest.

What to have ready before the audit

• Legal entity, sites, product list, and IFA scope/sub-scope to be certified
• Option 1 or Option 2 structure; for groups: QMS, member register, and internal audit records
• Plant-protection or veterinary-medicine records, pre-harvest intervals, and authorised-use evidence
• Water, fertiliser, hygiene, and harvest-hygiene records relevant to the product
• Traceability from field or pond to packed lot, including PHU if packing is in scope
• Written list of add-ons the buyer actually requires (GRASP or others) so they are in the same audit window if needed

Frequent findings

• Telling a buyer IFA is organic certification
• Retailer requires GRASP but only IFA was audited
• Option 1 certificate used to cover unaffiliated growers
• PHU or subcontracted packhouse left outside the IFA scope
• Assuming İTU or a residue test replaces GLOBALG.A.P. for a named retail specification