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
very rigorous and smallholder farmers, in common with all farmers
7
. Despite the develop‐
ments for organic sale in the world market, domestic market is not enough strong in Turkey
and almost all of the organic food is produced for export. During the period of 2000 and 2011,
organic food export in Turkey showed significant increases, rising from about 18 million to
200 million euros-an increase of nearly 11 folds. Turkey has mainly exported organic products
to Germany, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Northern European countries,
USA, Canada, Australia and Japan are most important for Turkey. In 2023, export target of
Turkish organic production is 1.7 billion Euros [1, 19].
This structure shows that Turkey has not been using its organic farming potential very
efficiently. Main reasons for these can be stated as insufficient domestic demand and not using
proper extension systems and approaches etc. Furthermore, poor advisory services and limited
number of advisory activities are other factors that prevented the development of organic
farming in Turkey [39].
5. Advisory and extension services and legislation
Organic agriculture production has different features from than conventional farming. For that
reason it should be different extension and advisory services. Organic farming is realized
under controlled field and applied prespecified rules. Moreover, all stages of production need
to be documented. Therefore, producers and all involved firms or individuals in organic
production should have enough information and experience. For this reason, all fims or
individuals need to have cooperation with each others. In other words, producers are not
independent as in convetional production since organic production is a controlled production
system until the product reaches to consumers. There are some difficulties for organic
agriculture that is mainly stem from applying internaional standards, production, processing
and import of organic products, inspection procedures, labelling and marketing [39].
Especially two regulations on organic agriculture are significantly important, the US and the
EU legislation which influence strongly the standards of organic production and trade
worldwide. Production and inspection standards of US organic products, EU organic products
and organic products from a lot of other parts of the world are equivalent with each other. The
EU regulation on organic production and plant-animal products, and processed agricultural
goods imported into the EU were also investigated. In the member states of the European
Union (EU), the labelling of plant products as organic is governed by EU Regulation 2092/91,
which came into force in 1993, while products from organically managed livestock are
governed by EU Regulation1804/99, enacted in August 2000. Each European country is
responsible for enforcement and for its own monitoring and inspection the system. Applica‐
tions, supervision and sanctions are dealt with at regional levels. At the same time, each
country has the responsibility. All these regulations lay down minimum rules governing the
production, processing and import of organic products, including inspection procedures,
labelling and marketing [28].
As it noticed, producers, processors and export-import firms of organic products are respon‐
sible for certification bodies. Otherwise farmers or traders who want to export organic products
