ORGANIC AGRICULTURE / Case For Investment and Examples
With the world population fast approaching to the 7 billion mark, the debate over our ability to sustain a fast growing population is heating up while the world is facing many potentially devastating disasters in the coming years due to the climate change and increased pollution. There will be hunger, drought and many illnesses associated with them. The water will be polluted and vegetables & fruits will be toxic for human consumption in not too distant future.
The possibility of a second wave of the latest depression due to the half baked solutions that have been applied so far has increased tremendously and such a crisis is expected in the Western economies starting towards the end of 2011.
The western world has the financial resources to invest. Turkey which is part of the developing world on the other hand does not have the financial resources but it has clean water, abundant soil, suitable climate and cheap workforce to produce organic food enriched with organic humus.
As Eurogaz, an Istanbul based investment company formed by a group of entrepreneurs, we have connections to reach 30,000 farmers at the Aegean District in the Western Turkey who are willing to produce organic food to export to the developed economies and rich countries. Their main problems can be listed as follows
- They need guarantees for annual purchases and set prices for the food they produce for exporting.
- They want to branch out into different produces and methods to make them more appealing to the foreign markets (for instance organic produce grown with organic compost would be an asset).
- They need new technologies for packaging, freezing, drying processes of their produce.
- They are unable to provide any collateral in return for the investment capital to be provided by the banks or funds.
- What they have is land as an asset and cheap & reliable workforce.
We have a feasibility study of a planned additional investment concerning the first organic compost facility which started in the Aegean Region 4 years ago. If we are able to add a packaging unit and some other additional investments to this facility, then we will be able to respond to the increased demand for organic compost, hence make money. This technology will be utilized in combination with organic food production. They will support one another.
The organic compost facility can be easily replicated through the Aegean region. It is planned to get organic waste from the Municipalities in hundreds of thousands of tons per year and turn them into compost after fermentation.
Third, we have a feasibility study of the first Biomass project in Turkey located in the Aegean Region. It is planned to get organic waste from one of the medium size Municipalities in the region and turn it into 500KW power plant and produce more than 4 million KWH of electricity per year. This electricity is to be bought by the Turkish government based on a guaranteed purchasing scheme at 13.3 Dollar Cent/KWh as given in the New Energy Law which came into force at the end of 2010.
None of these projects /project owners are in possession of any assets or any reasonable cash to be put down as collaterals to facilitate the normal credit channels and make these projects happen. The local people might not have money, know-how or project management ability, but they are willing to cooperate, work and produce. What we can suggest is that we can take the role of the investor or partner for these projects, make investments, provide technological know-how, fully support these projects to make them successful in the region so that similar projects can be modelled and replicated elsewhere in the region. We, as Eurogaz, intend to play a role in the shape of an Investor, Partner and Capital Provider. In return we will have a certain share in the annual produce and turnover which are intended to result in profits for the company.