THE GLOBAL WINDOW OF TURKISH FOOD AND AGRICULTURE The Global Window of Turkish Food and Agriculture Sector
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The foreign dependency of the Turkish pasta sector in production has ended thanks to the high yield of durum wheat in recent years.
Aykut Göymen, Head of Turkish Pasta Industrialists’ Association (TMSD), said that around 4 million 300 thousand tonnes of durum wheat was harvested last year.
Göymen stated that they expect a durum wheat yield of around 4 million 900 thousand tonnes this year and said, “This yield rate is a record amount in the history of the Republic of Türkiye. Durum wheat grown in the country is very good in terms of quality and yield. We make all of the durum wheat used in export and domestic market by using the wheat of our country. We export using our completely national, domestic wheat without depending on any imported inputs.”
Göymen indicated that the Turkish Grain Board (TMO) has around 1 million tonnes of durum wheat in its stock, which it obtained from producers last year.
Explaining that they foresee that around 5.9 million tonnes of durum wheat will be produced with stock and harvest, Göymen noted, “We expect to use 3 million tonnes of durum wheat in pasta and semolina production. We will probably export the remaining 2 million tonnes of durum wheat as durum wheat. The success we have achieved in durum wheat in the last two years has been achieved in a close dialogue with our President, our ministers and TMO officials. Our main expectation is to maintain this success.”
“Our own products have been sufficient for our own production for the last 3 years”
Underlining that they are proud of producing pasta with Turkish wheat without importing and exporting it, Göymen added, “Since irrigated agriculture is predominantly done in our country and there is no rain in dry fields, we were trying to meet our production even in the domestic market by importing. Now, thank God, our own products have been sufficient for our own production for 3 years. Last year, we started to export our own products and exported excess products and this year will be the same.”
“This is beneficial for farmers and industrialists, we are not dependent on abroad and we can easily buy quality products from abroad. We can export our quality product to abroad as pasta. Our state makes absolutely no loss from the products it exports. It directly converts the product it receives from our farmers into foreign currency and pasta as an agricultural product has a really important place in reducing the foreign current account deficit,” Göymen concluded…
