Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
7. The public extension model for organic agriculture of Turkey
In Turkey, mostly extension and advisery services for organic agriculture are implemented by
public (the Ministry of Food Agriculture and Livestock). In order to institutionalize and build
a suitable infrastructure for organic farming an effective and applicable extension model must
be developed for the country. Because as it is in developed countries, the development of
organic agriculture in Turkey also depends of farmers' training and extension and advisory
services provided for this purpose. Undertaking this mission in our country for many years,
and organized in every province and district, the Ministry of Food Agriculture and Livestock
has been carrying an important task and the organic farming units of the Ministry are carrying
out their mission.
Currently organic agriculture units in 81 provinces mostly employed in Farmer Training and
Extension Division are serving as extension agents. In general, except a couple of provinces,
2-5 personnel are working in organic farming units. These aren't completely devoting their
efforts for extension activities but for some other departmental work. Considering provincial
potential of organic farming and personnel status of each province, the number of personnel
working for organic units must be arranged. The determined leader provinces will also make
contributions to the neighboring provinces due to similarities in environmental conditions and
agricultural structures [9]. Therefore, these provinces can be identified as “Organic Farming
Central Provinces” (OFCP). Administratively no province will supersede each other but the
provincial directorates will work in a cooperative way with a professional manner (Figure 2).
Once the professional staff members of OFCP work effectively, they will probably develop
organic farming in their own province and will make further contributions to neighboring
cities. In this way professional staff of organic farming units working in provinces with lower
and/or uneconomical organic potential may concentrate on other activities. In addition, the
TARGEL (public extension) personnel must also be used for organic agriculture especially in
villages with high organic potential. All this process will increase the effectiveness of extension
services and will contribute to organic farming as well as proper use of human resources in
the Ministry.
In the new suggested extension advisory system, the following measures must be taken to
make the personnel of OFCP and OFU work effectively [9, 38]:
•
Ensuring full-time work in organic agricultural extension:
Among the other duties and respon‐
sibilities, personnel working in organic farming must perform two major tasks; control and
advisory. However, according to agreement with the international sense, control and
extension duties and responsibilities should not be undertaken by the same personnel. The
control function is completely different from the advisory function. In this case, the
extension advisor and the controller must be different people and independent of each other.
Accordingly, workload of the personnel working in the field of organic agriculture must be
reduced.
•
Technical information capacity must be increased:
In every region there is a need of expertise
and technical information in organic farming activities. Therefore, personnel working for
