Green Cities Consulting and MPS Turkey Coordination Office organized a meeting in Antalya to provide detailed information about its cut flower and plant monitoring and inspection system, how it works and the types of certification services it offers in this field. The meeting was attended by many growers from all over Turkey.
MPS Turkey Coordinator and Green Cities Consultancy General Manager Pinar Acar: “MPS has been offering certification services through independent inspectors in horticulture for quite a long time. The goal of MPS inspections can be summed up as “more profitable sustainability” and helps local growers to prepare to open up to international markets by assisting them in bringing up their production standards to global standards. MPS offers advice in lowering products and increasing efficiency whilst transforming the growers into more environmentally friendly production organizations. Consequently this brings a lot of advantages for growers who are looking to expand their business into international markets and increase their trade volumes. MPS provides evidence of quality of the products and the conformity of production facilities to sustainability standards.”
Antalya Agriculture City Official Mustafa Ozen: “Antalya is a very important agricultural city in Turkey. We need to improve on sales and the marketing side of the business. Our growers need to grow what the market needs at the expected quality. Around 500 million cut flowers are grown in Antalya annually and 90 % of the production is exported. However growers don’t know where to sell when they increase their production volume.
Our growers are conforming to all safety standards but our main problem is we cannot market our products successfully and get its value in international markets. We need to explore alternative production methods. MPS is matching good agricultural practices with sustainable agriculture standards and therefore contributes to our growers in improving their quality."
MPS Turkey Manager Raymond Scheepens: “MPS is a leading organization which operates in 46 countries and has been offering its service to 3,000 firms worldwide. It has been offering certification in horticultural and sustainable production through independent inspectors. Additionally, through our Trade Portal, we are helping the companies with the MPS certificate to increase their visibility in the global market place.”
Source: Hurriyet