Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Current Status of Advisory and Extension Services for Organic Agriculture in Europe and Turkey
http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/58541
In Turkey, organic agriculture has been started in 1985 with the aiming for mainly export
purposes. Turkish Association of Organic Agriculture Movements (ETO), a non-profit
organization of organic agriculture, established in 1992 after twenty years IFOAM [1, 11]. By
the Turkish Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock, prepared the Regulation for plant
and animal production based on organic production methods in 1994 [2].
According to norms of EU-Regulation on organic production of agricultural products deter‐
mined on June 24th 1991 the regulation (EEC) NO. 2092/91 was published in the Official Journal
of the EU and became legally binding on January 1st 1993. Until then it was only valid for
organic plant products. The publishing of the regulation (EEC) No 1804/99 also included
organic livestock products. The regulations on livestock products became effective on August
24th 2000 [20].
Advisory or extension services have been developing for organic farming in developed and
developing countries. While this services have mainly provided by producer organizations
and special advisory firms in EU countries it is given by buyers of organic products products
in Turkey [39].
In this study, developments of organic farming in Eropean countries and European Union
members and Turkey were investigated with special attention given to advisory and extension
services. More specifically, advisory service providers, how these services provided and
similarities and differences were investigated between EU-28 countries, and Turkey.
3. Organic development
Evidence for significant environmental amelioration via conversion to organic agriculture is
very substantial, pesticides are virtually eliminated and nutrient pollution has been substan‐
tially reduced loss of biodiversity, wind and water erosion, and fossil fuel use and greenhouse
warming potential are all reduced in organic agriculture relative to comparable conventional
agriculture systems. As it given above the agroecological characteristics of organic agriculture
are reviewed-weed, invertebrate, disease, and soil fertility management practices. Yield
reductions of organic agriculture systems relative to conventional agriculture average 10-15%,
however these are generally compensated for by lower input costs and higher gross margins.
Large-scale conversion to organic agriculture would not result in food shortages and could be
accomplished with a reduction in meat consumption. Organic agriculture systems consistently
outperform conventional agriculture in drought situations, out-yielding conventional agri‐
culture by up to 100% [30]. One argument for supporting organic farming has been that it
requires more labour and leads to higher rural employment. On the other hand, the high labour
costs may constrain the development of the organic sector [27, 39].
Worldwide there are 1.8 million organic producers more than three quarters of the producers
are located in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The countries with most producers are India
(547591), Uganda (186625) and Mexico (169570). There has been 12% increase in number of
producer from 2010 to 2011. Total number of producers in 2000 were 0.25 million which and
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