Investigation of producer organizations engaged in organic agricultural production and marketing activities in Türkiye

Organic farming activities in Türkiye, which started in the middle of the 1980s, especially in line with the demands from European countries, have made progress in the intervening years, albeit with ups and downs, and have reached a position of commercial importance. Today, Türkiye's organic agricultural production is able to find buyers both in the domestic and export markets and these markets continue to diversify and expand. Despite the positive trend in the organic agriculture market, there are exits from organic agriculture on the producer side due to support methods, policy changes, cost increases, technical difficulties, and similar reasons. This thesis aims to reveal the roles of cooperatives and producer associations that bring together small-scale producers in production and marketing activities to overcome the difficulties experienced in organic agricultural production in Türkiye. For this purpose, data were collected by conducting face-to-face and teleconference interviews with 29 producer organizations reached by using the list of Organic Production Enterprises of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. The results obtained from the research were analyzed with the Microsoft Excel program. Among the findings obtained because of these studies; 58.72% of organic producer organizations have no or only one employee, 48.28% of them derive their main income from product sales, 55.17% of them carry out production and marketing activities only at the district scale, 51.72% of them have difficulties in the supply of inputs required for organic agriculture. As a result, it is seen that organic agriculture producer organizations in Türkiye have deficiencies in providing services to their partners/members at the production and marketing phases and that they need to be supported by various funding sources, especially by the public. In Türkiye, where the organic agriculture market is in the development stages, it would be beneficial to provide training and implementation programs in coordination with universities, development agencies and producer organizations in order to overcome the problems in cost and production planning in order to ensure sustainability in production and to develop good practice examples.