Press release…
16 October World Food Day…
Şemsi Bayraktar, Chairman of Union of Turkish Agricultural Chambers (TZOB) made a written statement on the occasion of World Food Day and said, “According to FAO data, 828 million people were malnourished and starved in 2021. Again in 2021, approximately 2.3 billion people in the world or approximately 30 percent of the world’s population, experienced moderate or severe food insecurity.”
Pointing out that in the report of FAO on food production, Bayraktar stated that the number of countries in need of food aid from abroad has increased to 45.
“Although we do not expect the problems to be resolved in a short time, stable policies and practices should be put into action as soon as possible. We have to manage these risks as a country by taking the necessary measures immediately,” Bayraktar said.
Underling that they cannot reduce inflation by suppressing product prices and suppressing producer prices is a wrong choice of policy tool, Bayraktar added, “Although restricting exports will result in short-term results, it will cause loss of export markets and decrease in product supply in the medium and long-term. Excessive increases in the agricultural producer price index have come to the fore as one of the most important factors causing food inflation in recent months. This is the result of the high cost of agricultural production.”
Emphasizing that reducing loss and waste is as important as efficiency in ensuring food safety and even a gram of every crop produced with great effort and resources is too valuable to be wasted, Bayraktar concluded, ““The idle capacity in production should be minimized and increasing the efficiency and using the production potential at the desired level will be an important tool in reducing the risk of food inflation. It is necessary to develop and expand contract farming in order to provide market guarantee for agricultural products, reduce price fluctuations, shorten the food value chain and have a say in the trade of the product produced by the farmer. Furthermore, the New Market Law should also include farmer organizations that will enable farmers to trade what they produce and therefore get a larger share of the food value chain.”