Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
it was 1.8 in 2011, 34% are from Asia, 30% in Africa, 18% in Latin America, 16% in Europe and
1% in each Latin America and Oceania.
With regard to the growth of organic agriculture after first decade of 21st century organic
agriculture area has been trebled (37.2 million hectare in 2011) as compared to 1999 (11 million
hectare). According to the SOEL's Survey results, more than 37.2 million hectares are managed
organically worldwide [57]. Among regions Oceania is the region with highest organic
agriculture area 12.2 m ha (32,8%) followed by Europe (10.6 million ha, 28,5%), Latin America
(6.9 million ha, 18,5%), Asia (3.7 million ha, 9,9%), North America (2.8 million ha, 7,5%) and
Africa (1.1 million ha, 3%).
Australia (12 million ha) followed by Argentina (3.8 million ha) and USA(1.9 million ha) are
the countries with highest share of organic agriculture land. The total share of top three
countries is 48 percent of world organic agriculture land and 70% of world organic agriculture
land is based in 10 countries with 26.3 million ha.
The world total organic agriculture land is just 0.9% of total agricultural land; again Oceania
is the region where organic agriculture land is 2.9% of total agriculture land followed by
Europe (2.2%) and Latin America (1.1%). China, Spain, Canada, France, Poland, Russia
Federation, Kazakhstan, Turkey and Romania are the countries where the rate of increase in
organic agriculture land is very high.
Much of the increase is occurring in third world countries where some farmers are attracted
to the export benefits of organic food production. Many governments have been encouraging
farmers to convert to organic farming for this reason, however, the study calls for a cautionary
approach for the potential of export markets is often overstated. Market growth rates are
slowing and supply-demand imbalances are expected to become a feature of the global organic
food industry. The global market is projected to continue to expand however at slower growth
rates. The industrialized world is expected to comprise most revenues, however, other regions
are expected to show high growth due to the growing popularity of regional markets. The
formation of trading blocs and convergence of consumer demand are also other main factors
stimulating demand in other countries [54, 39].
In European Union organic farming has been implemented in almost all countries, but five of
these countries - Spain, Italy, Germany, England and France-account for about 57.4% of total
organic farming area. Turkey with a 325 thousands hectares organic farming area has about
3.92% organic farming area compared to EU. With respect to organic farming enterprises, the
share of organic farms in Turkey is around 17% (Table 1). These indicators show that organic
farming has been realized in small scale. In fact, average farm size in Turkey (9.2 ha) is
significantly lower than that of EU-28 (39.7 ha).
Realizing that favorable climatic conditions and topografic structure in Turkey, organic
farming area is relatively low. In order to use organic farming more effectively and increaase
organic farming area in Turkey, suitable conditions need to be provided.
