THE GLOBAL WINDOW OF TURKISH FOOD AND AGRICULTURE The Global Window of Turkish Food and Agriculture Sector
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Press release…
Pointing out that production in the agricultural sector has declined by an average of 7 per thousand in the last three years, Chairman of Aegean Region Chamber of Industry (EBSO) Ender Yorgancılar said that the industrial sector is also negatively affected by these developments in the agricultural sector. As a matter of fact, on the one hand, our food industrialists have difficulty in finding sufficient, high quality and stable agricultural raw materials, and on the other hand, they face high wage increases due to high rates of food inflation.”
“At this point, it has become critical to ensure sufficient production hike in the agricultural sector and to develop methods to reduce input costs for this purpose in terms of economic, social and global competitiveness,” he said.
INSUFFICIENT PRODUCTION…
Reminding that food inflation has been higher than CPI inflation in the last 35 months, Ender Yorgancılar explanined, “The reason behind this is that while production in agriculture declined in the said period, the population, that is, the demand continued to increase. The importance of food prices in the fight against inflation has soared. It is difficult, even impossible, to achieve success in the fight against inflation without growing food production sufficiently and reducing the increase in food prices to single digits.”
REMARKABLE SPIKE IN IMPORTS…
Emphasizing that the developments in agriculture both directly and indirectly affect the industrial sector negatively, Yorgancılar added, “Industrial production has risen by 8.5 per cent on average in the last three years. However, this rise remained at only 3.8 per cent in the food products industry. Accordingly, while the spike in exports of food industry products remained at 14.9 per cent, imports soared by 21 per cent. Therefore, the decline in agricultural production not only slowed down the increase in value added and exports that could have been created in the food industry, but also ramped up the foreign exchange spent on imports. In addition, real wages in the industrial sector have increased by 20.2 per cent on average in the last three years due to the hike in food prices.”
AGRICULTURAL POLICY WITH PURCHASE GUARANTEE…
Highlighting that insufficient agricultural production growth and high food prices have reached a level that will adversely affect Türkiye’s global competitiveness, Yorgancılar concluded, “For this reason, it would be appropriate to urgently conduct a ‘Complete Agricultural Census’ and review our perspective on the agricultural sector and our farmers as well as agricultural policies, to give more weight to support and planning tools and to switch to an agricultural policy with product purchase guarantee.”
