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Understanding Organic Agriculture

Organic agriculture is an ecological production management system that promotes and enhances biodiversity, biological cycles and soil biological activity. Organic farmers prefer to use renewable resources and recycling to return what most conventional farmers would have wasted, back to the soil.

Regional Distrubitione

Regional Distrubion

There is no formal or legal definition for organic agriculture. However, as universally accepted, organic farming do not use synthetic fertilizers, man-made pesticides, herbicides, growth regulators, antibiotics, hormone stimulants and/or livestock feed additives to grow crops and raise animals. Instead, it relies on such methods as crop rotation, green manure, compost, biological pest control and mechanical cultivation. By minimally using off-farm inputs while maximally restoring, maintaining and enhancing ecological harmony, it is to optimize health and productivity of soil life, plants, animals and people.

“Organic” often refers to “natural” and “eco-friendly”, implying that some organic methods were used in the production of food. However, this label does not guarantee complete adherence to organic practices. Though most “natural” products do not contain synthetic properties, they may have been provided conventional (synthetic chemicals used in production) food or feed (i.e. “natural” beef).

Today, more and more people realize the importance of both producing and consuming organically grown foods and livestock products. Sales of organic products are rapidly growing; it continues to grow by over 20% annually and have shown an increase of at least 20% a year during the last 6 years. And it still promisingly grows…

Benefits for (Conventional) Farmers

Organic agriculture can be learnt by conventional farmers, whereas they use their established resources and skills to gain more profit—more than they used to enjoy from conventional farming.

More profit comes from less production cost. Researchers have found that by eliminating the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, minimizing soil erosion by up to 50% and increasing crop yields up to five-fold within five years can reduce the production cost by over 25%.

Organic agriculture is also simple and easy to learn. A well planned transition strategy allows conventional farmers to adopt new, more effective and more cost-efficient organic agriculture methods in three to five years.
It also shows big love and appreciation to the earth. Organic agriculture supports higher levels of wildlife as well as improves the entire ecosystems, including the ground water. It promotes soils that are life-friendly and rich in micro nutrients. It also benefits the dairies where cows organically fed experience better health, less sickness, less diseases and ultimately produce better tasting milk.

In the end, not only farmers and consumers enjoy the benefits. The whole global ecosystem does, too.

Benefits for Consumers

It is easy to differentiate the organically grown foods from the conventional ones. Consumers can taste the difference and quality.

Organically grown foods are free from harmful chemicals, artificial flavors and preservatives. Eating these kinds of food may reduce the risk of heart attack, strokes and cancer. You are basically what you eat anyway.

Post image for Importance of Organic Farming in Terms of Food Safety – Featured Article by Agriculture Guide

Food safety is defined as taking precautions and complying with necessary rules during production, processing, storage and delivering stage of food in order to provide healthy and precise food production.

Sufficient food supply or food safety has been a strategic issue in history of humankind. In view of rapidly increasing world population, environmental pollution has become a serious threat for human health as a result of the use of developing technology and of policies providing for the intensive input use for the supply of food necessities.

In addition to these developments, economic troubles and inadequate education in less developed and developing countries have increased the feeding problem of rapidly increasing population; made it hard to supply food; 713increasedthe number of the establishments producing unhealthy and low quality food; and allowed them to make unfair competition with the ones producing safe food. As a result, health of the society, food industry and the production of high  quality and safe food have been affected negatively.

Production of healthy and high quality raw material

Production of healthy and high quality raw material should be seen as a prerequisite for food safety. Safe food should be produced in establishments under minimum health, hygiene and technical conditions.

Physical, biologic and chemical dangers have great importance for food safety. Physical dangers are all kinds of foreign materials (stone,sand,metal,wood,etc.) which are not desired to be included within the food. They affect the demand of consumers and cause health problems. Bacteria, fungi, viruses and parasites are serious biologic dangers regarding food safety. Chemical dangers for food can be listed as natural toxic materials (mytotoxins and sea oriented toxins), environment oriented toxins (ex. Hg, Pb, Cadmium, dioxins) and chemicals naturally found in plants (ex. Glycoalkaloids in potato).

In order not to pollute the environment, it is quite important for food safety and environmental hygiene to control and send away the wastes and residues that occur during food production.img_agriculture

In order to increase the production supply for the increasing population in the world, transgenic products are produced by means of modern biotechnology. Different from the other crops grown on nature, transgenic crops have genes which do not belong to their own varieties, raise significant doubts and create risks for animal and human health, for food safety, for biologic diversity and for environmental and socio-economic structure.

Monitor all stages from production to table

The concept of food safety is evaluated with the criteria of “food safety from field to table” in developed coutries. With this in mind, main principles of this criterion, animal health (preventation and control of animal diseases, animal welfare), plant health (pesticide safety), safety of animal feeds, safety of food products and labeling of food are under the control of central authorized food safety authority. In food safety chain, it is important to monitor all stages from production to table.

In every part of the world, especially in EU countries and in other developed countries, the people are more display_agriculture-goh-iromoto-cconscious of environment and of the products on market. Consumers prefer safer, healthy and environment friendly food.

Marketing the products whose genetic structure is modified, as a result of dioxin problem that appeared in Europe recently has increased the demand of conscious consumers for organic products whose all production stages are under control and which are away from such concerns. These developments have been effective in the consumption of organic products by environmentalist groups and the people caring their own health.

Organic farming includes production systems which are friendly to environment and livings and which aim to reestablish the natural balance lost as a result of misapplications. To this 01-custodians-of-agricultureend, organic farming has been developed as an alternative production system whose all production stages from production to consumption are under control and registered, and which aims for the protection of soil and water resources in all kinds of growing techniques and inputs which are used beginning from the preparation of seedbed.

How to get maximum yield per unit area ?

In development targets where the balance between human and nature is in the forefront, it is aimed to secure sustainability in agriculture avoiding from the factors polluting soil, air and water in agricultural activities. The main aim in organic farming is to get maximum yield per unit area by protecting the productivity of soil and water resources providing the continuity for nature.

Although agriculture is done under organic production conditions in many regions of some countries, the products are not marketed as organic products because the agriculture is not included within control and certification system. Some countries are very advantageous as per organic farming because of its proper ecology and unpolluted natural resources such as soil and water.agriculture Importance of Organic Farming in Terms of Food Safety   Featured Article by Agriculture Guide

Control and certification are among the most important stages of organic farming. In order to introduce the products to domestic and foreign markets as organic products, they sould have an organic product certificate. Certification system is a guarantee for the production, processing and packaging of products as per organic standards. Besides providing reliability for consumers, the system protects the producers and firms against unfair competition.

By means of regulations related with organic farming activities, maximum food safety is provided by disciplining all shareholders inside this system. Moreover, the logos on organic products increase the confidence of consumers for these products.

The increase in organic farming export as a result of the validity of the Organic Farming Law and harmonization with the provisions of current legislation with the European Union directives numbered 2092/91 is an indicator of the confidence of importer countries in the organic products of our country.

Dangerous Weapon Jeopardizing

Because of the commercial concerns and danger of hunger of the rapidply increasing world population in the future, unconscious use of developments in scientific technology, mechanization and industry without taking sufficient precautions for the production of environment and current resources has become a dangerous weapon jeopardizing the human life by damaging the existing critical balances of the world.

So, the aim of organic farming is to introduce and market safe food not threatening the human health by damaging the natural sources and polluting the environment by stopping the harmful pace of humankind.

Post image for Organic, Schmorganic – What Does It All Really Mean?

Human beings suffer from a devastatingly chronic malady that modern science has not yet figured out how to cure. This widespread illness infects virtually all of mankind, but particularly those who live in highly developed areas [click to continue…]

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Since our article on organic pest control recipes proved to touch on a very common problem, we have prepared a much longer and detailed guide on keeping those bugs away from your innocent plants. It starts with preventive measures and goes on to open warfare. [click to continue…]

Post image for How To Prepare Organic Fertilizer From Manure — A Featured Article

It is generally thought that organic fertilizers are only used in organic farming. That’s not true as any kind of created by living organisms is considered to be organic. But for use in organic farming, the base material the organisms create the fertilizer must be organic and contain no chemicals. One of the most widely used matter in organic fertilizers is manure, but most of the time it’s used in a wrong way in hopes to keep the original content. Here we’re going to write a pretty simple and good way to maximize the nutrition value of manure for your plants.

The tricky part of this is :

In the first step, we’re not going to press it together. So, mince the manure as much as you can. It requires air to heat up, which will kill the foreign seeds and keep your garden clean of intruding plants. Pile the manure but it shouldn’t be higher than 1 and a half meter. If it’s too dry, add some water as dry manure will not heat up. The tricky part of this is to keep the temperature at around 60-70 degrees, if it gets higher than this, there’s the risk of your fertilizer burning and being ruined. For this reason you might check the temperature and if it gets too high, turn the manure inside out. Keep doing this until all of the manure becomes the same color.

For the second step, we’re going to make the manure usable by the plants without effort. Add water to the manure and press it together as much as you can and make sure it won’t get air. Now, without air another kind of bacteria will take over and process the manure into a great fertilizer.

The points of consideration:

  1. Make sure your spot for fertilizer creation is safe from outer elements such as rain and wind.
  2. You should cover the manure but for the first step make sure it gets enough air.
  3. Remember to add water to the manure if it gets too try, the bacteria will need some moisture.

With this steps, the manure will be much more efficient than before and your plants will be healthy and strong.

Post image for A Few Easy Pest Control Recipes For Organic Farming

Pests are usually a particular headache for the aspiring organic farmer, you want to get rid of the little bugs but since the conventional chemical insect destroyers are off the limits you feel you have to choose between giving up on organic farming or risking your whole production. [click to continue…]

Post image for What Is Organic Farming? A Featured Article

Organic farming is a form of agriculture in which no synthetic components are used — in addition,  certified control measures are maintaining from production to consumption. The goal of organic farming is to avoid soil, water and air pollution and sustain the health of soils, ecosystems and people. [click to continue…]