IN THE CONTEXT OF ENVIRONMENTAL PRODUCTION AND AGRICULTURAL ENTREPRENEURS: VERMICULTURE

Abstract

Economic development is one of the most important problems of countries. The fact that economic development has to materialize with scarce resources differentiates the interest in the environment. While the lack of resources causes comprehending environment as an "obstacle", actually the answer to the problem comes from nature again. Finding a solution to this situation by applying the loops in the ecological life to production actvities, at the same time it can turn into an opportunity. Agriculture is one of the basic sectors which have been ongoing since the existence of human. Approaches which emphasize the concept of sustainability in agricultural production and encourage the organic production methods become common in the whole world. The fact that earthworms' capacity of converting organic waste and residues into a high quality valuable product in short time was understood ensured the rising a new agricultural production sector called vermiculture. Sustainability just can be applied with the integration of the social, economic and environmental dimensions. It is seen that in environmental sense with its contribution to the waste management, in economic sense with the emerging caste and worm accumulation and in social sense with the agricultural practices which support community health, vermiculture is a model that is suitable for sustainability. By supporting in the context of agricultural entrepreneurship, social dimension should be supported with its effects on employment. Vermiculture awareness must be increased and supported because of its sensitivity to the environment and because of the fact that it is faster and more costless than many entrepreneurial activities. In this study, vermiculture was examined in the context of environmental production and agricultural entrepreneurs.