How sustainable agriculture depicts social values: View from Croatia

In this paper we analyze of organic agriculture as an indicator of social values in Croatia. Organic agriculture mirrors postmodern worldview and broader social movement that points to the need and possibility of fundamental social changes, with goal of improving quality of life. Organic agriculture shouldn’t be separated from social issues as restoring rural communities and eliminating the rural-urban and producer–consumer gaps. Despite the growing interest and natural potential, organic agricultural sector in Croatia participates in country’s total agricultural production with negligible 1%. Reasons are numerous. However, positive trends are opening an array of possibilities for development of organic agriculture in Croatia. Our analysis leads to following conclusions: a) Croatia can be qualified as non-productive, import-dependent, technologically conservative and conventionally oriented country ; b) if organic agriculture mirrors social values, than postmodern values have hardly any presence in Croatian society ; c) higher number of ecological producers and civil initiatives that place organic products show the increase of interest for organic food and civil organization ; however, d) there are large obstacles at almost all aspects of organic production, and e) due to the low level of social capital, a very low perspective for networking of the organic farmers.