Our Project “e-Organic” will be carried out by a total of seven institutions; BDUTAEM (Coordinating Institution), KİMEM and KONTOM from Turkey, ORC and NSA from the UK, ACTYVA from Spain and HUMUS from Italy. The studies will start on 01.12.2020 and will be completed in 24 months. A total of 18 people (trainers, researchers, academicians, experts, technicians), 5 from BDUTAEM, 3 from KİMEM, 2 from KONTOM, ORC, NSA, ACTYVA and HUMUS, will participate in the studies. Throughout the project, international meetings will be held in Turkey (BDUTAEM, 5 days in March 2021 and 2 days in October 2022), Italy (HUMUS, 5 days in September 2021), Spain (ACTYVA, 5 days in March 2022) and the UK (NSA, 5 days in June 2022). LTT (ORC, 5 days in June 2021) will be organised in the UK. As multiplier event, activities will be carried out in each country in September 2022. The first 3 months of the project will be preparation, the following 12 months will be completing academic studies and intellectual outputs, and the remaining 9 months will be implementing these outputs and remedying deficiencies. Organic Action Plan Report for IFOAM 2015: Wants to create digital platforms to increase national/international knowledge sharing in organic animal husbandry in 2020 and beyond, the UK to open its know-how to international sharing and, to increase Spain's international cooperation. IFOAM Organic 3.0: Has identified one of the strategic goals for the development and implementation of different-new ideas (innovation) for the adoption of good practices and the inclusion of more farmers in organic production. EU 7th Framework Program Final Report: Indicates that organic production is insufficient against the increase in the number of organic markets, that more producers need to make organic production, before this, it is appropriate to provide training of technical personnel and then direct the producers to organic production. In addition, the importance of gathering the information obtained from organic livestock was emphasized. Turkey National Action Plan for Organic Farming: Indicates the need to educate the target group which is one of the most important actors for the development and dissemination of organic farming. Because of this and similar calls, the national and international target audience of the project will be Veterinarians, Agricultural Engineers and teachers working in public (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in Turkey and Agriculture/Livestock vocational schools, high schools and similar ministries in other countries). Concrete intellectual outputs of the project will e-Lectures, e-Platform and e-Book. e-Lectures will include main topics on organic livestock as 1) History, 2) Legislation, Certification and Policies, 3) Ecology, 4) Breeding, 5) Health and Welfare, 6) Reproduction, 7) Nutrition, 8) Farm Management and 9) Food Safety. Lecture topics will be divided into two groups as general (History, Legislation, Certification and Policies, Ecology, Food Safety) and special (Reproduction, Nutrition, Breeding, Farm Management, Health and Welfare), prepared by the project team and uploaded to the e-Platform. Special topics will be based on organic cattle, sheep and goat breeding. In addition, e-Lectures will be turned into e-Book and e-Book also will be uploaded to the e-Platform. Organic farm visits will be held at the meetings, and interviews and video footage with farmers will be uploaded to the platform. In order to promote and disseminate the project, leaflets will be printed and social media accounts will be created. Web-based and mobile compatible e-Platform will be prepared in Turkish-English and will be available free of charge to the target audience for 10 years. In addition, the language option will be added to the platform so that it can be translated into some European languages (such as Italian, Spanish, French and German). Thus, the target audience speaking different languages besides Turkish-English will be enabled to benefit from the platform. Domain and hosting costs, usage and encryption rights of e-Platform will be purchased by BDUTAEM for 10 years, and all necessary legal measures will be provided to protect the platform. At the end of the study, we will obtain concrete intellectual outputs (e-Lectures, e-Book and e-Platform), which we call “e-Organic” and of which all rights belong to the financial sponsor of the project. During this period and in the next 10 years: dissemination and public ownership of the Project, increase in professional, scientific and institutional capacity, internationalization, contribution to the promotion of the partner countries, cultural exchange, production of new projects, organic, animal welfare, environmental and food safety awareness, training of technical staff, training of breeders, increase in organic animal production and its acceptance in the society are expected.
We wanted to prepare an e-training module for target audience of project at national, international and EU level by gathering the information on organic animal husbandry and making it usable. Thus, we aimed to enable our target audience to have more information about organic animal husbandry and provide education in this field, provide technical support to farmers dealing with organic livestock, create a training curriculum for students studying in universities, colleges, agricultural vocational high schools and taking organic livestock lessons, provide equal opportunities in education by contributing to e-education in field of education, provide consumers with easier access to organic animal products that prioritize animal and human health, give importance to animal welfare and environmentally friendly production model instead of animal products containing chemical additives, emphasize food safety, help ecological balance by disseminating organic livestock, open more agricultural areas to organic agriculture, contribute to "Green Agreement", strengthen individual and institutional capacity, increase visibility and cooperation, contribute to globalization, cultural exchange, see good practices in place and achieve similar gains.
We applied this project with aims such as gathering together of information obtained in organic agriculture and organic animal breeding, which is an integral part of it, increasing information sharing and making it available at national, international and EU levels, establishing e-platforms, adopting good practices, involving more farmers in organic animal breeding, providing training of technical personnel, creating social awareness on issues such as animal health and welfare, ecology and food safety, increasing agricultural areas of organic agriculture, contributing to the "Green Agreement" etc. In this sense, we would like preparing the most important subjects on organic animal production as e-courses, turning them into e-book, providing for the target group (Veterinarians, Agricultural Engineers, Agricultural Vocational High School Teachers) free of charge for 10 years in Turkish and English languages on a web-based and mobile compatible e-platform (web page), thus providing trainings, increasing the knowledge that the target group needs in the field of organic animal breeding and ultimately the realization of our project application reasons.