I think Government should educate and encourage people by providing the necessary information about organic farming and its benefit to the people. In the short term encourage by providing suitable incentives to promote organic farming and subsidize the organic produce.

“In 2009 Austria spent € 92.5 million in direct subsidies on organic farming. This is up 21.7 % from 2007 (€ 76 million), and 30.3 % from 2001 (€ 69.5 million)2. Additional money goes to farmers associations (ex. 2003: € 1.5 million for extension services and PR) and marketing campaigns (ex. 2003-05: € 5 million to AMA – Austrian Agrarian Marketing Agency).”

A good resource can be found here:

http://www.rafiusa.org/docs/noap.pdf

Dear Dr.Nageswara, Thanks for an example of initiative, practice and a NOAP to mainstream organic agriculture, which is helpful to promote food safety.

Dear Nageswara,

You are right that governments should educate and encourage people by providing the necessary information but I think the point of view of a government may heavily influence opinion and activity of people not to speak on creating acceptable behaviour towards environmental issues, consumption etc.

The URL you showed is an excellent one. I present here an excerpt of it:

“The NOAP Drafting Team consolidated the issues into eight major categories:

A. Environmental Stewardship

B. Health

C. Cultural and Social Change

D. Research

E. Education

F. Organic Integrity- Standards, Enforcement, and Compliance

G. Marketplace

H. Organic Transition and Incentives”

Regarding the points where these issues may touch people’s mind are

C. Cultural and Social Change

E. Education

H. Organic Transition and Incentives

Daydreaming a bit, I fancy if one even 5% of the military budget would be invested into organic agriculture...

Dear Dr.Andras,Thanks for your contributions and summary of NOAP. I think we may need to mainstream organic agriculture throughout its value chain so that we can differentiate its producuts from general agricultural produce.To implement this, economic incentives require to put in place. And NOAP could partly be applicable to other countries as well.

Thanks Andras for summarizing. At least in US reasonable effort is going on in the organic farming. I am seeing in Seattle there is considerable interest in it. A good number of people have started it at home.

Another idea that could be tried is the hydroponic gardening in concrete jungles of our cities.

http://www.hydroponics.net/learn/hydroponic_gardening_for_beginners.asp

Dr.Nageswara, thanks for sharing thought and evidence in the US with us.I am about to review progress of organic agriculture development in Thailand. I will write in Thai language. But I will prepare an abstract in English language, and willingly wish to share the results with You and interested peers. I am sorry for any inconvenience may cause you If you found few of my working papers only in Thai language.

At this time I will add an English abstract to my selected Thai language papers on RG one by one.

Promotion policy differs from country to country , For example due large land holdings in USA the market may be given prime importance while in some other country where land holding are small the food security, conservation of natural resources may be the factor that need priority. Promoting organic can only be possible by involvement and incentives/assurance to all four stakeholders i.e. producers, policy makers, marketeers, and researchers. Support of Government for development of Model organic farms in every climatic regions/areas is must to develop faith among all the stakeholders , that organic is economically and ecologically a viable option. Funding to long term research in organic farming another area of support. Encouragement to producer- consumer cooperatives further provide strength to organic system. Certainly will of policy makers play a great role to achieve this goal.

our government is helping organic production separation of very small funds for projects and certification. BiH does not have a law on the state level for organic production and all previous activities were taking place with the involvement of non governmental sector and the international community

Thanks to both Arun and Azra for sharing views ans insight with us. Yes we may need to make incentives available for producers of organic agricultural products. Perhaps we could promote them as niche products.

Government will play a measure role of funding and its social welfare department along with rural development, forestry, animal husbandry / department of agriculture together will act as a reinforcement to the sustainable development.

sustainable agriculture is one of the component

Dear Prakash, I agreed with you on the role of government for promoting organic agriculture.And so far the real problem is that there is unmatched between rather abundant supply of organic agricultutral produce and demand. This means the producers has limited knowledge on where is their niche market or customers? And how to fine tune on marketing channels?

Dear Choen Krainara

Sir most difficult task for farmers is their market for organic manures and vermi-compost. In India Goa state we had made a self help groups to take this task

and at leastb 50% of tghier produce was given to 5 and 3 star hotel garden maintenece and NGO's Involved in waste land development( Goa Mineral foundation)

Our government has no rules to support organic production because there is no law on organic agriculture. All support is through the payment of some projects and with little money

Dear Choen,

Government's role depends a lot on the country. For example, organic farming is supported by agricultural subsidies in European countries. In this sense, I have studied organic beef cattle farms and the dependence on the farms on subsidies is really high (subsidies constituted about 45% of the total income).

Attached you have some of the studies on the topic.

Regards,

Alfredo J. Escribano. 

Article Evaluación de la sostenibilidad de explotaciones de vacuno d...

Data Comparative Sustainability Assessment of Extensive Beef Catt...

Dear All,

Another opportunity is the privilege of governments to fix food and feed standards in their countries.