THE GLOBAL WINDOW OF TURKISH FOOD AND AGRICULTURE The Global Window of Turkish Food and Agriculture Sector
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Combines and Harvesters’ Federation (TÜBİFED) President Ahmet Saltık said that the avoidable losses in agricultural production could meet the need of bread across Turkey.
Saltık said, “40 million tonnes of crop obtained in approximately 120 million decares of land harvested with combine harvesters in Turkey. All these crops obtained by 17.200 harvesters in Turkey’s machinery pool. Meanwhile the harvest loss rate resulting from various preventable reasons in this harvesting process is 5 percent and considering the by-product losses, the material value of these losses exceeds 4 billion liras.”
Indicating that pre-harvest and post-harvest loss rate could be taken in the same proportions, so avoidable losses totaling over 10 billion liras / year, Saltık stated, “In other words the sum of the avoidable crop losses are close to the ratio of bread consumption in Turkey. In order to avoid these losses and solve the industrial problems, sectoral associations came together.”
Saltık explained, “In order to solve the sectoral problems and prevent these losses, Harvesters’ Associations have been established. Afterwards many Associations came together so as to form the Combines and Harvesters’ Federation as a strong non-governmental organization. Production was the first to be done to prevent harvest losses and post-harvest losses. One of the most important reasons for our harvest losses is that our combine harvester park is old. Currently, 4 thousand 97 in the 0-5 age range, 4 thousand 49 in the 6-10 age range, 4 thousand 33 in the 11-20 age range, 5 thousand 11 over 20 and approximately 3 thousand 200 harvesters over the age of 20 are over 40.”
“According to technical assumptions, 1000 thousand new combine harvester is required to enter Turkey every year, this number in 2018 realized as 356, but as for 2019, only 98 units imported to the country,” Saltık added.
“Figures of 2020 are expected to be under last year. The difficulties in buying harvesters in recent years and increasing operational conditions has been threatening the sustainability of combine harvesting enterprises. This situation might pave the way for the harvesting industry to experience harder challenges. That is why our government needs to support purchasing of combine harvesters in order to prevent crop losses during the harvest. We want it to be bolstered up by grant-supported applications and similar applications,” Saltık concluded…
