Tagebuch der 5. Tour (nur auf Englisch)

• First Week (13th to 21st of march)
• Second week (22nd to 29th of march)
• Third week (30th of march to 4th of april)

First Week (13th to 21st of march)

13th of march

Welcome to our diary! We are one day before departure to Turkey. Everything is organized (more or less) and we are looking forward to be in Izmir tomorrow evening ! One thing we organized is our new guestbook! Look here! Please notice, that there are a lot of webguests, that are interested in but they don´t understand German. So it would be nice if you write in English! 

14th of march – Arrivel in Izmir

After a long day including the trip by train from Witzenhausen to Frankfurt
and the flight to Izmir the whole team arrived happy and tired in the guest house of the Ministry of Agriculture. After some (relatively short) complications because of rooms that weren't booked everything turned out good and we all got a room. Now it's time to rest and collect some energy for our first day in Izmir tomorrow.

15th of march – first day in Izmir

After breakfast we went to the city center of Izmir to explore it. Walking through crowded streets full of little shops gave us a nice impression of the people. While walking we suddenly heard the Muizin of a Mosc calling to pray. It was amazing and made us feel like being in the middle of the orient. After a game of Backgammon with someone in the streets we went back to our accomadation.

16th of march – BCS & IŞIK

We were meant to be at the office of BCS, a German certification body that operates in Turkey as well, at 9 o´clock. Just when we were about to leave we got stoped by to assistance of the Ministry of Agriculture. We had a tea together before one of them showed us the way to the office of BCS. When we arrived we got welcomed by Suat Çelebi, representative of the Turkish office of BCS, and Prof. Aksoy. After we discussed some organizational things about the workshop day on Wednesday at Ege University with Prof. Aksoy she left and we had the chance to have a talk with Mr. Çelebi. He told us a lot about the history of organic agriculture in Turkey that started with the production of sultanas, figs and olives around Izmir as well as the general structure of agriculture in Turkey. It gave us a greate impression and was a perfect input for the workshop day at the University. After lunch which we had with a very nice colleague of Mr. Çelebi we were awaited to drive to a company called “IŞIK organic gida” which means organic food. The company is about one hour outside of Izmir. They  sell dried fruits like aprictos, apples, figs, plums and much more. After two presentations about the company and alternative agricultural methods that included Biodynamic methods we went to see to fields. The first one was a traditional vineyard for sultanas where the vines grow about half a meter up to one meter above the ground. The second was a modern vineyard where the branches get tied to wire.
On our way back to our accommodation Mr. Çelebi stoped at a cake shop and we had some delicious little cakes. A perfect ending for a perfect, first day. We were all filed with enthusiasm and are very curious about our visit at IMO, another certification body, tomorrow.

17th of March – IMO and Rapunzel

Today we visited the IMO office where we heard something about theire activities in the field of organic certification. After IMO we visited the “Rapunzel” company. This is only the company which produces 100 % organic dry fruit products e.g. raisins, figs, apricots, hazelnuts and sultanas. The company has contracts with 450 farmers. 70 permanent and 300 temporarily seasonal workers are being employed by the company.

The company provides occasionally trainings for farmers about organic farming, organic regulations, new farming practices and new technologies. The company has several projects in different countries of the world.
We saw the whole production process like receiving raw material, packaging and transportation. Every year 10 000 tons of copper are exported from Uzbekistan to “Rapunzel” Turkey.  Quality management system (QMS) and food safety (traceability), labelling, storage and personal hygienic systems are found to be very interesting. Our team was really impressed with theire technique for “Alfatoxin” detection. The organic products are certified by IMO.
Mr. Attila, the General Manager of Rapunzel joined us for lunch. He was a interesting and entusiastic man who told us about the history of Rapunzel and himself. He showed us that it is possible to run a big company and stick to your ideals.

Later we visited a small village. Rapunzel helped the farmers to become organic and today nearly the whole village is organic. Once again we’ve had a really warm welcome with tea an we saw a composting center, a vineyard, and an olive plantation. The farm started its activities 20 years ago.

18th of march: Ege University – workshop day

Today we had our first presentation and workshop day at the Ege University of İzmir. After a warm welcome from Professor Aksoy we had the presentations and after a lunch break the workshops. The presentation about organic agriculture in turkey was held by Emre Bilen, a PHD student of the Ege university. 34 students visited the presentaions and all in all 25 the workshops. Before we started the workshop we played ‘fruitsalat’ as a kind of warming up game. İt was very funny and we get used to each other.
The open space workshop about organic agriculture and food was very excting and the students asked a lot of questions. At Ege University the students can choose some organic agricultural lessons, so that some of the participants already knew a lot which really helped in the discussion.
The second workshop was about GMO (genetically modified organism). We’ve had nine participants including two PHD students. One group read a scientific article about how GMO-Soy can change the fertility of rats and other animals. The other group got an article about the effects of BT-corn pollen on learning behaviour of bees. The PHD students helped with the translation of the text. After the reading of the articles we started a very interesting discussion about GMO which we had unfortunately to interrupt due to time pressure.
Emre invited us to meet him and other students again in the evening, so we met him and a lot of his friends to have a beer. We went to a big club with live music and enjoyed once again the turkish hosptality and celebrated this first, exciting workshop day with our new friends who we hopefully meet again before we fly back to Germany!

19th of march – Ministery of agriculture

After a really nice and hard day yesterday we had a relaxing day today. We visited two villages that  cultivate organic olive trees with the Ministery of Agriculture. At the second village we had lunch with the mayor of the village and his family. Once more a demonstration of Turkish hospitality. They showed us how to cock a traditional Turkish coffee before reading our future through the empty cups. Before returning to Izmir we saw the water reserve which provides the City with water. In the afternoon we tried to catch up with some sleep... 

20th of march – weekend

Today we left Izmir and went to a small fisher village called Sigacik. To do so we had to take the metro and three different small buses which was quite funny with all our luggage. With the help of some nice Turkish people we found the village without any troubles. When we arrived we got welcomed by a very friendly Turkish old couple who lived in Germany for some years and therefore were able to talk German. The accommodation is located right in front of the sea. We had dinner cocked which was really nice because it contained some vegetables. Everyone was happy and we looked forward to the next day. A day without any Programm.

21th of march – weekend

Our first day without any alarm clock ringing in the morning. What a grate start! After breakfast Daniela, Verena, Carsten and Ben went for a walk. Suren had some more sleep and Saib went for a walk as well. In the afternoon the weather changed and  we had heavy rain. Best thing to do....sleep.
For dinner we had some fresh fish cooked by the owner of the house. It was fished by the fisherman of the village the same day.

Second week (22nd to 29th of march)
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22nd of March – Trip to Aydin

This morning we had to leave lovely Sigacik. Because it was raining like cats we decided not to visit the ancient city of Ephesus. During our trip we met a really nice canadian couple. They were also quite excited to meet us, because they run an organic farm for self-sufficiency.
The Universities guesthouse turned out to be a really nice place with a view all over Aydin. Before dinner we met with Prof. Osman Erekul to plan the next two days.

23rd of March – Adnan Menderes University – Aydin – presentation

Our presentations  started in the afternoon. So we had enough time to get prepared. We were all quite excited because the room was very big and a lot of participants were announced. After a tough start due to language problems the participants and our team warmed up and we had a good discussion. For today the program was finished, so we had  some time to relax before meeting Prof. Erekul, Mr. Ürkmez and Mr. Dalkilic for dinner which was very nice and tasty .

24th of March – Adnan Menderes University – Aydin – workshops

In the morning we went to the agricultural faculty (ziraat fakültesi) of Adnan Menderes University which is 30 min outside of Aydin. Again we had some language problems, which were solved by nice people who translated during our workshops. Despite the language difficulties the participating students showed a lot of interest and asked many questions. Tumbs up! Tesekkular Aydin!

In the afternoon we visited the animal husbandry of the faculty and later one of the biggest organic farms in Turkey. It was nice to see dairy production. We asked a lot of questions, because of the small organic market in Turkey.
After two days of rain the sun was shining, the weather was sweet take me to the rainbow...  

26th of march - Excursion to a rose cooperation

This was the second day of our Isparta after a long 5 hours travel the day before from Aydin. On this day we visited the “Post harvest physiology lab” of Sulyeman Demirel University. The assistant of Prof.Dr. Kyouncu named Tuba was leading us to explain about the equipments and how does it work. At first she showed us the separator which works as a nitrogen generator for the reduction of CO2 and increment of O2. After this the second equipment shown to us was “Ethylene Converter” which consists of many pipes which is responsible for the fruit senescence. The last device shown to us was Multiplex which is considered as the brain of control system which has automatic and manual part.

After this we went to Basmaksi(Rose project) with the help of car we rented. The manager of the project Riza Oeztas helped us to visit the destillary, so that we could get some knowledge about the working principles of machine to extract the rose oil. A really nic man at the distillary showed us his lab where extract rose oil. According to him, 3 tons of leaves are required to produce 1 kg oil. Generally there is the production of 600 kg leaves per decare (0,1ha) and 1 kg oil costs 3500 Euro. WALA is the main export company from Germany as told by him and also exported to USA and France. He told that there is no local consumption.

After this we drove back to Isparta city, changed some currency for our project and finally returned back to our guest house of the stated University. Tomorrow we have the presentation about our Organic agriculTOUR in the university.

27th of March – Presentations at Süleyman Demirel University – Isparta

After all the organisation trouble we were curios to know how many people will come to our presentations. Due to time problems of the university we couldn’t conduct the workshops, so we changed some presentations in order to have at least some time for questions. We were quite excited to see nearly 50 really interested students. After the presentation about organic agriculture they started to ask a lot of critical questions like: „Do you think it is possible to solve the hunger problem of the world only with organic agriculture?“ or „I have to earn money with my farm and there is no turkish market for organic agrculture, so why should I care about the thinks you talk about?“ or said things like: „It is not possible to have enough organic fertilizer for all crops!“ and a lot more. So it turned out out to be a very intense discussion, the best we’ve had so far. 

28th and 29th of march – Weekend

Yesterday we took the bus from Isparta to Antalya, our last University. Leaving Isparta and going to Antalya at the end of March means to leave the mountains (1.200m NN) with temperatures around 0°C during the night, rain and fog and take of to a summer-like weather around 20°C, blue sky and a blue sea.
After bringing our luggage to our Accommodation we left straight a way to the waterfront. If there weren't so many German tourists with red plastic wrist bands, it would be very beautiful. Downtown we split of. Verena went for a walk at the beach outside of Antalya, Suren, Saib and Daniela went for a walk in the city center and Carsten and Ben went to a Barbier to get rid of some hair inside their hears with a flamed little stick. Stinky but funny.

Today we went to a beach all together for a nice walk. Tonight we need to prepare everything for our last presentations on Monday. 

Third week (30th of march to 4th of april)
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30th of March - First presentation at Akdeniz University in Antalya

This day turned out to be quiet different from what we've expected. Instead of students we had 13 Professors and Ph.D students as participants. But after two weeks of traveling we are now used to adapt to every situation. We just skiped two presentations, shortened and changed the other ones and had a good discussion. For the next day we arranged to meet with students.

After the presentations we went to a company called 'Antalya tarim'. They produce herb and vegetable cuttings for Turkey and for export. We saw huge greenhouses and had some interesting talks with the German manager. Although the company is not organic, they were really interested in our project. Now we are looking forward to meet the students tomorrow!

31st of March – Second presentation at the Akdeniz University

Finally we met some students of the Akdeniz University. Because of their timeshedule we only had 1 ½ hours for our presentations and had to leave the workshops. Instead of them we had a longer discussion with the students. They were all in their last year, so they asked a lot of questions and we didn't even had the time to answer them all.

Afterwards they surprised us with an awesome homemade lunch in the fields. There we meet also the Profs again and enjoyed once again the Turkish hospitality! Thank you, guys! Later the students showed a greenhouse where the practiced on tomatoes.

1st of April – Travel to Denizli

Although we will miss the sun and the sea, we had to leave Antalya. But looking forward to see the oregano project near Denizli tomorrow and meeting students from Izmir again on Friday it wasn't that hard. In Denizli we had to find a hotel, which wasn't easy, because it seems like we are the only tourists here. Which, in fact, is quiet nice!