THE CURRENT STATUS OF ORGANIC AGRICULTURE IN TÜRKİYE AND INVESTIGATION OF ITS DEVELOPMENT POTENTIAL WITH THE HELP OF SWOT ANALYSIS

Summary

Today, in order to meet the food needs of the rapidly increasing world population, instead of
traditional agricultural practices, production techniques using intensive technology have been
used, and as a result, more chemicals and drugs have been used. Excessive and uncontrolled use
of chemicals causes residues in food and adversely affects human and animal health, natural
resources and the environment. As a natural consequence of this situation, the production and
consumption of organic foods has increased in the world as consumers have started to turn to
safer food. The size of organic agricultural lands, which was 11 million hectares in 1999, reached
an all-time high of 74.9 million hectares in 2020. While the share of organic agricultural lands in
the total agricultural lands was 1.1% in 2016, this ratio increased to 1.6% as of 2020. When we
look at the number of organic agriculture producers, while it was 2.4 million in 2015, this number
increased to 3.4 million in 2020. In Türkiye, the size of organic agricultural lands increased 4
times in 2020 compared to 2002 and increased to 382,665 hectares. The share of organic
agricultural lands in the total agricultural lands is 1%. The number of producers, which was
12,428 in 2002, reached 52,590 by 2020. With this study, the current situation and development
potential of organic agriculture in Türkiye has been tried to be revealed. Strengths and
opportunities of organic agriculture in Türkiye, then weaknesses and threats that may be
encountered in the future were determined with the help of SWOT analysis. While the climatic
characteristics, regional location, and the prevalence of labor-intensive agricultural work
constitute the strengths of organic agriculture in Türkiye, factors such as small and fragmented
enterprises, high cost, low productivity and lack of organization are their weaknesses. As a result;
When the strengths and weaknesses of organic agriculture in Türkiye are compared, the strengths
are more dominant. Although factors such as climate change and environmental pollution are
threats; The growing consumer awareness in recent years and the increasing health concern due
to the Covid-19 pandemic offer new opportunities to Türkiye in terms of organic farming
production.