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Description
Conventional agriculture is a major polluter of the environment and makes an important contribution to climate change, accounting for about a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, it has a negative impact on biodiversity and natural resources – water and soil – and poses potential threats to human health, as conventionally grown food often contains residues of phyto-pharmaceutical products – pesticides –, hormones or even GMOs. The share of organic farm areas among agricultural producers in Slovenia is growing too slowly. This means we will not achieve the necessary negative impact reduction of conventional agriculture on the environment and nature.
In the Association of Organic Farmers of Slovenia we will actively participate in creating a new model of a professional organic farming promotion service in Slovenia. So far, this service has been in the domain of only one actor, the Chamber of Agriculture and Forestry of Slovenia (CAFS); this turned out to be too weak and insufficiently motivated. We want to strengthen the position of organic farmers within this service on the basis of guidelines provided by the most successful countries that clearly say that the participation of organizations committed exclusively to organic farming is necessary in these activities. By applying this guideline we expect to see a significant improvement in motivation, quality and the scope of promotion activities, and thus also performance.
By enhancing the presentation of organic farming to the public and among (conventional) producers and transferring the good practices from the Czech Republic (Pro-Bio partner) and Austria, we will contribute to increasing the number of organic farmers in the short and long term.
Summary of project results
Conventional agriculture is a major polluter of the environment and makes an important contribution to climate change, accounting for about a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, it has a negative impact on biodiversity and natural resources – water and soil – and poses potential threats to human health, as conventionally grown food often contains residues of phyto-pharmaceutical products – pesticides –, hormones or even GMOs. The share of organic farm areas among agricultural producers in Slovenia is growing too slowly.
In the Association of Organic Farmers of Slovenia they co-createdg a new model of a professional organic farming promotion service in Slovenia where organic farmers have a strong position. This lead to incresed motivation, quality and the scope of promotion activities for organic farming that resulted in more farms who applied to become organic.
With the support of the project the number of organic farms grew from 3.689 to 4.004.