TÜRK EKONOMİSİ

The vast majority of countries support farmers by at least one but usually a combination of;

• Income supports

• Trade barriers

• Subsidies

• Price controls

Wheat, sugar beet and barley are the largest products in the agricultural sector, two of them -wheat and sugar beet- being produced more than 20 million tonnes in 2017.

Cottonseed and cotton lint are agricultural products with high added value and are important ingredients for the textile sector. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Chinese demand for cotton is declining while Indian demand for it increases along with the rest of the world. Turkish cotton production is not self-sufficient and Turkish imports trend on cotton tends to increase, similar to Indonesia and Vietnam...The trend for cotton production has clearly increased until early 1970s and after that it became weaker despite keeping the trend direction. After the year 1994, the trend started gaining strength in favor, yet it once again lost its pace in the early 2000s. As seen in the graph, the trend seems to be stabilized since then. Note that a sharp decrease in production was captured after 2007 and it lasted until 2009, arguably being a result seen after a global economic crisis, which resulted in a fall in global demand.

Using this as a starting point, we can analyze current problems in Turkish agricultural sector in five separate segments

• Small arable land per producer

• Insufficient capital investment

• Insufficient generation of added value

• Domestic price levels and multinational competition

• Rapid depletion of natural resources

For example, according to “Standard Layout for UNECE Standards on Fresh Fruit and Vegetables 2017” an agricultural product in this category must have the minimum requirements of being:

• Intact

• Sound

• Clean (at some point, soil is acceptable)

• Free from pests

• Free from damage caused by pests

• Free of abnormal external moisture

• Free of any foreign smell and/or taste

After a close look at the Turkish agricultural sector, it is useful to grasp and understand how the sector finds its place in the whole economy and how this place changes in time. In this section, we are going to take a look at macro level data for production, GDP ratio, employment and foreign trade of the sector as a whole.

According to Turkish Exporters’ Assembly, the largest exports from the sector were made to Iraq with a total worth of 3,634,464,000$ while Germany and the United States followed it with 1,525,941,000$ and 1,005,459,000$ respectively in 2018. In the 2014-2018 period

Physical capital investments embodying modern technologies are of high importance for the sector in terms of productivity increase.

The ministry has five subsidiaries:

• Ataturk Forest Farm Management

• The General Directorate of State Hydraulic Works

• Turkish State Meteorological Service

• The General Directorate of Forestry

• Turkish Institute of Water