Antalya Commodity Exchange (ATB) Chairman Ali Çandır said that in 2024, there was a serious contraction in Antalya’s agricultural trade. Drawing attention to the decline in tomato, vegetable and fruit trade in recent years, Çandır stated that the functioning of the market was negatively affected.

‘Only 10 percent of production was reflected in the market’
Pointing out that Antalya is one of the most important agricultural production centres of Türkiye, Çandır said that despite this, the amount of products traded in the market is rapidly decreasing. “In the last 10 years, the amount of tomatoes traded in Antalya markets has dropped by 56 percent. Although the total amount of tomatoes produced in our province in 2024 was 2.6 million tonnes, only 294 thousand tonnes were traded in the markets. In other words, only 10 percent of the production was reflected in the market,” Çandır said.
Indicating that this decrease was not limited to tomatoes, Çandır added, “The amount of vegetable processing decreased by 47 percent and the amount of fruit processing decreased by 38 percent. Antalya’s tomato production reached 2.6 million tonnes, vegetable production reached 5 million tonnes and fruit production reached 2 million tonnes. In other words, 10 percent of the production was traded in the markets. This situation really causes a market distorting mechanism. Because the fresh fruit and vegetable market should have a very fast and efficient functioning. The effective functioning of the market can be realised by processing the meaningful density of the total amount in the markets.”