D-8 Looking Forward to Establish a Capacity Building Workshop on Organic Products

Geneva, Switzerland | September 13, 2007 by D-8 Secretariat

Organic products in developing countries

During a discussion with working partners at UNCTAD in Geneva, May 2007, D-8 Secretariat through her Secretary General brought the topic of challenges and opportunities of developing organic products in developing countries. According to the available data and recent observations, developing countries of D-8 has the promising potential to boost the growth of organic products, which not only limited to agricultural items only, but also related other sector such as tourism/eco-tourism.

Secretary General of D-8 had been invited by the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) for attending and preparing a paper at the 16th IFOAM Organic World Congress. The congress serves to track presentation and exchange practical experiences from farmers, consumers, campaigns and cooperation; as well as a form of scientific research track, where current academic research and others will be presented and discussed.

Turkey so far has developed quite well her organic product sector. For example, Turkey’s Tekelioğlu village of Manisa Town, where villagers do not use chemicals in agriculture with the incentives of the state and some private companies since 1989, has been exporting 90 kinds of organic products to the United States, Germany, England, Japan and Singapore. According to the report of Doğan news agency, the rate of production which was 195 tons in 1997 reached to 3,033 tons in 2006. The village exported organic products worth $17.4 million. Villagers, the state and private sectors are happy with the outcome of raising organic agricultural products and are now eyeing organic agriculture tourism to get more share from this $20-billion-market in the world.

Becoming increasingly popular across the world, organic farming is practiced by 623,000 producers in 120 countries as of 2006. When it first began in Turkey in 1996, it was only practiced in İzmir with eight products being produced but now 200 different products are grown in 50 cities. The Turkish organic farming market has grown by 30 percent in the past 10 years since its initiation while exports have reached $100 million and the domestic market has grown to $20 million. The number of people who work in the field has reached 15,000.

In the other side, agriculture-friendly climatic conditions of Pakistan allow growing of 40 different kinds of vegetables and 21 types of fruits in four seasons. In an official source of the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (MINFAL) stated that at present area under fruits and vegetables was 0.995 million hectare of the total cultivated area with the total production of 10.992 million tonnes annually. Major vegetables grown in Pakistan including potato, onion, chilli, melons, cucurbits, tomato, turnip, and pea to meet domestic demand as well as to export abroad. In the fruit sectors, citrus, dates, mango, guava, apple, banana, apricot, grapes, almonds, peach, plum and pomegranate are the main fruit to be exported.

In the discussion between Secretary General and H.E. Ambassador Lakhsmi Puri, Director Division on International Trade in Goods and Services, and Commodities of UNCTAD, in Geneva, D-8 Secretariat underlines her interest to cooperate with UNCTAD to establish a capacity building program through a join workshop. UNCTAD provided 3 interesting volumes of “Background Papers of the International Task Force on Harmonization and Equivalence in Organic Agriculture, cooperate with FAO and IFOAM,” and stated its willingness to cooperate on the issue.

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