Letters

First Organic Agriculture Congress, Istanbul

Good morning!

I am going to take you away from Poland this morning; to consider the proceedings of the First Organic Agriculture Congress of Turkey, held in Istanbul last month. An event which we were invited to participate in.

Around 300 delegates gathered at a venue on the edge of the Bosphorus sea, surrounded by the sprawling metropolis of Istanbul.

Good morning.

“Gorale” are the equivalent to “highlanders”. They are a tough breed of warm hearted mountain people who eek-out a way of life -and living- in the mountainous regions of southern Poland. They are known for their dry, sardonic sense of humor and superior weather forcasting skills.

Most Goralie have smallish plots of land where they raise a few pigs or sheep and grow a bit of veg.

Many are skilled foresters and horsemen, good builders and general ‘all-rounders’ in the art of survival – at high altidudes.

You know there’s something different the minute the plane emerges beneath the clouds. There below, is a chess board of hedgeless, patchwork fields in various shades of green, amber and brown – with the occasional clump of trees reaching up amongst the spreadeagled farmland.

Then there are the houses, mostly rather small, dotted around here and there in characteristicly nonconformist groups – and the little roads further dissecting the landscape.

For anyone with half an eye for the agricultural lay of the land, one’s curiosity is immediately aroused. For large swathes of Southern and Eastern Poland are still the domain of a peasant farming tradition which has changed little in the past three hundred years.