University Student Attitudes Toward Organic Foods - Organic Food and Agriculture: New Trends and Developments in the Social Sciences - page 89

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University Student Attitudes
Toward Organic Foods
Aslı Uçar and Ayşe Özfer Özçelik
Ankara University/Faculty of Health Sciences Department of Nutrition and Dietetics
Turkey
1. Introduction
In the recent years, new food trends have emerged, among the most popular ones of which
is the organic trend. Many food companies have begun offering organic products similar to
many conventional products that have been stocked on grocery shelves. These organic foods
have gained a share of two percent in the grocery store purchases. Soon after organic foods
began to appear, natural foods have come into the spotlight. The labels of these products
read “no preservatives”, “no artificial colors” or “no artificial flavors” (Solano, 2008).
Organic agriculture is not the same as natural agriculture; the former does not use fertilizers
or agricultural pesticides. Organic agriculture is an ecological production method that
increases and develops the value of biological activities and varieties. Organic foods are
subject to a process during which no synthetic fertilizers, agricultural pesticides, chemical
herbicides (that control harmful weeds), hormones, pigments, antibiotics or chemical metal
packaging etc. are used (Shepherd et al., 2005).
Organic farming is carried out in at least 160 countries worldwide. The share of organic
agricultural land in total agricultural land as well as the number of organic holdings is
continuously growing. The organic products market is also growing not only in Europe and
North America, where the largest markets are located, but also in many emerging
economies and economies in transition. More than thirty-seven million hectares of
agricultural land are managed organically by 1.8 million producers. About one-third of the
world's organic land -13.4 million hectares- is located in emerging markets and markets in
transition (SIPPO, 2011). Top ten countries which give priority to the organic food
production in the total agricultural land are Liechtenstein (26.9%), Austria (18.5%), Sweden
(12.6%), Switzerland (10.8%), Estonia (10.5%), Czech Republic (9.4%), Latvia (9.0%), Italia
(8.7%), Slovakia (7.5%) and Finland (6.6%) (Willer, 2011). In 2009 global sales of organic food
products reached 55 billion US dollars, more than doubling in value from 25 billion US
dollars in 2003. Europe was the second largest organic market in the world after the USA
with a turnover of 26 billion US dollars in 2009. Germany had 5.8 billion euros, followed by
France with 3 billion euros, the UK (2.1 billion), Italy (1.5 billion) and Switzerland (1 billion).
These figures increase year by year and impressively illustrate the powerful development of
the organic food production and market all over the world (SIPPO, 2011).
Organic farming in Turkey, as distinct from the developments in Europe, commenced as
export oriented activities in 1986 in line with the requests of importing companies. At first
production and exports were conducted suitable to the legislation of importing countries