Home / Agricultural Economy / PAKDEMİRLİ: THE STRUCTURAL CHANGE LIES IN CONTRACT FARMING

PAKDEMİRLİ: THE STRUCTURAL CHANGE LIES IN CONTRACT FARMING

Stating that structural changes are needed to solve the hike in food prices, Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Bekir Pakdemirli said, “Structurally, I see the most important change in contract production. In order for our farmers to be more comfortable, they need to start contracted production quickly over the years.”

Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Bekir Pakdemirli, who first visited the Governor’s Office within the scope of the Çorum Provincial Programme, later met with the representatives of the sector.

“The pandemic commands us to change”

Pointing out that the world and Turkey are struggling with the pandemic, Pakdemirli explained, “There are many factors affecting agriculture and food in this process. Commodity prices are increasing in the world. Countries started to stock up. Foreign trade measures were introduced. The pricing structure has gone way up due to the anxiety from managing uncertainty around the world. This situation is against our farmers, producers and consumers. Here, we continue our efforts to keep our producer in production sustainably. The pandemic is now commanding us something. It means that we should not continue our work as we used to do. If we are producing a crop, we need to look for different products of it. We need to rise the productivity per acre and per hectare. In the last 20 years, there has been an increase of 40 percent per decare of products. We have an increase of up to 112 percent in maize. All of this happens with R&D and technology. After the pandemic, we need to review all issues.”

Bekir Pakdemirli

“Our farmers need to switch to contract production”

Emphasizing that the solution to the increase in food prices is structural changes, Minister Pakdemirli added:

“Today we are putting forward short-term solutions. However, I see the most important structural change in contract farming. We have a few more crops including certain products of Turkey, be it sugar beet. We have some experience in these crops. We see that there is 80-85 percent contracted production in developed countries. In our case, this rate is at the level of 5 percent. Our farmer does not know how much the product he planted will sell for. He plays a bet until threshing time. In order for our farmers to be more comfortable, they need to start contracted production quickly over the years. Turkey is late in this area.”

“The solution is not at the base price”

“The leader of the main opposition party is coming out. He makes some statements. It’s about base prices. The solution is not in base prices. Turkey can no longer turn back from the free market economy. Turkey is open to import and export. You can’t run these jobs at a base price. If you do these jobs in contract farming. The issue is that the producer remains in production and gets stronger, and you can only do this with contracted production. We have a lack of legal regulations regarding contract production. This has to be completed. We should not perceive this as a magic wand. We need to increase the share of contracted farming in total production. This takes time, we need to put it into action as soon as possible. In particular, contracted production is at the forefront of the structural change,” Pakdemirli concluded…

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