The Role of Organic Agriculture in Agricultural Development

Abstract

Rural development includes local population, its way of life, employment characteristics, income structure, dwelling conditions, service levels as well as cultural aspects just as traditional handcrafts, dishes, language, clothing and habits. Since agriculture is a historically determining economic activity in rural areas its effects primarily determines the rural ways of life. New rural development policy of EU can be featured by multisectoral and integrated approach. Organic farming is based on the definition of ecology as former namings just as "ecological", "biological" represent it. Its basic aim is ensuring sustainable development whereas it uses again, from time to time to locally available reserves. Among basic principles of organic farming can be found the protection of soil and environment and this implies the usage of natural capacities of plants, animals and the landscape and willingly tries to improve the quality of the environment. It can be stated that market demand for organic products is the strongest in Europe, as much as 46% of the world's organic product output is sold in this continent which possibly can be explained by its economic development level. This overall development reached Hungary, too. In December 2002 the estimations showed 105.000 ha and within this 54.497 ha had been registered as approved organic area. During the last year we carried out two focus group analyses examining the reasons for buying or not buying organic foods. In the presentation the most important results of the two focus groups will also be introduced in details.