Zdunska Wola, Poland

Eighteen years ago, Boguslaw Klimczak had a barn with 20 cows and a line of patient customers every morning: The farmer in this small town in central Poland sold his locally produced cheeses out of the trunk of his car at the local farmer’s market. Now Mr. Klimczak drives a Nissan SUV, and his company, with 3 million zlotys ($1.2 million) in sales per year, has its own distribution network sending fresh butter, cream, yogurt, and cheeses – made according to traditional Polish recipes – to stores across Poland, and without European Union subsidies to boot.

With strong economic growth in recent years – and a projected expansion of the economy by 5.4 percent this year according to numbers released by Poland’s central bank this week – Poles have begun looking for alternatives to the factory farm produce available on supermarket shelves. Farmers have responded by growing the country’s organic farming industry, a niche market for which the nation is particularly well-suited.

The number of organic farms in Poland has burgeoned during the past 12 years, from 300 in 1996 to some 13,500 today, according to EkoConnect, a German nonprofit think tank that studies organic agriculture. EkoConnect defines organic farming broadly as farming that works with nature instead of against it.

Farming has always been a small-scale enterprise in Poland, the only former Soviet satellite country to resist agricultural collectivization under communism. Nothing of the farm consolidation that occurred in the United States happened here, a plus for Polish farmers who today wish to certify their farms as organic.

“The structure of agriculture in Poland, where the average size of a farm is about 7-hectares [17 acres], is well-suited to organic farming,” says Bernhard Jansen, who heads EkoConnect.

Small-scale farmers are less likely to have ever used costly chemical fertilizers and pesticides, or to have given their livestock hormone-infused feed, a plus for farmers who wish to convert their farms. To receive regulatory approval as an organic farm from Poland’s agricultural ministry, farm owners must have refrained from using chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides for at least 12 months.

Full Story: http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/10/08/
polands-organic-farms-prove-to-be-fruitful-ventures/