THE GLOBAL WINDOW OF TURKISH FOOD AND AGRICULTURE The Global Window of Turkish Food and Agriculture Sector
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Press release…
Mehmet Ali Işık, Chair of the Aegean Dried Fruits and Products Exporters’ Association, stated that they had a rewarding year in 2024 by combining fairs, Development of International Competitiveness Projects and TURQUALITY Projects, Türkiye’s dried fruit exports surged by 15.5 percent to 1 billion 856 million dollars and the Aegean Region took the lion’s share in dried fruit exports with 1 billion 100 million dollars.
He emphasised that they have entered the 6th year of the TURQUALITY Project named Turkish Tastes, which they continue to promote Turkish food products in the US market and that they have achieved great success in exporting dried fruits and other food products to the USA as a result of their cooperation with the University of Nevada and the American Federation of Chefs and that Türkiye’s food exports to the USA have soared from 750 million dollars to 1.6 billion dollars.
Underlining the successful promotion of Turkish food products in the Japanese and Chinese markets, Işık said, “These successful projects have reduced our dependence on the European Union in exports. The share of the EU in dried figs decreased from over 50 percent to 38 percent. We reached an export figure of 534 million dollars in raisins, 411 million dollars in dried apricots and 336 million dollars in dried figs. We broke the previous record of 1.1 billion dollars. This success was achieved with the efforts of our exporters.”
Pointing out that they have established technical committees for raisins, dried apricots and dried figs, which dominate exports in the dried fruit sector and that they are making efforts to solve the problems in these products, Işık continued as follows: We continue to work together with Commodity Exchanges and Chambers, Universities, Research Institutes, Provincial and Forestry Directorates of Agriculture. In cooperation with universities and research institutes, we support projects and research and development activities to solve our sectoral problems both technically and financially, and we make initiatives before international organisations and the European Union.”
