THE GLOBAL WINDOW OF TURKISH FOOD AND AGRICULTURE The Global Window of Turkish Food and Agriculture Sector
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Press release…
Ömer Celal Umur, Chairperson of Aegean Tobacco Exporters’ Association; “We have implemented the Farmer Advantage Card (ÇAK) that supports our producers”
Ömer Celal Umur, Chairperson of Aegean Tobacco Exporters’ Association, in his statement, said that Türkiye is the world leader in oriental tobacco production.
“The decision to boost the domestic blend ratio in cigarettes produced in the country has also made the production of Virginia and burley tobacco attractive. In 2023, we reached 50 million kilos of Turkish type oriental tobacco, 20 million kilos of Virginia type and 1 million kilos of burley type tobacco production. As the Turkish tobacco sector, we want to ramp up our production to 80 million kilos in 2024. We support our producers for this,” Umur said.
Pointing out that they carry out various social responsibility projects in areas such as production, environment, infrastructure, labour force, water use in tobacco farming with the Seed Improvement Project to support boosting tobacco exports within their Association and working groups established within the framework of sustainability in tobacco farming, Umur explained, “In addition, we launched the Farmer Advantage Card (FAC) in order to reduce the agricultural input costs of our producers. Companies offering special discounts to our tobacco producers were defined to the FAC and a membership system was established. In addition, we continue to work on the standardisation and development of personal protective equipment and the collection, disposal and recycling of empty packaging of plant protection products used in production at collection centres.”
“The projects we have implemented in recent years and the fact that tobacco producers have been able to get the return for their labour have enhanced the interest in tobacco production. We aim to expand our exports from 922 million dollars in 2023 to over 1 billion dollars in 2024. In the January-April period of 2024, our exports soared by 4 percent from 280 million dollars to 291 million dollars. The most significant increase was in leaf tobacco exports with a 42 percent jump. Our leaf tobacco exports rose from 60 million dollars to 86 million dollars,” Umur added…
