THE GLOBAL WINDOW OF TURKISH FOOD AND AGRICULTURE The Global Window of Turkish Food and Agriculture Sector
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With its comprehensive incentives, young workforce and fertile lands, Şanlıurfa province is a true ‘centre of attraction’. The city awaits the investor with its every source and regional transportation network. Şanlıurfa aspires to become a manufacturing center for food safety as well. All stakeholders express the urgency for the use of technology in regional agriculture.
Şanlıurfa, located in the 6th region that provides the most advantageous supports among incentive programmes, is also one of the 24 provinces within the scope of the “Attraction Centres Programme”. In the region with a serious young workforce potential, Şanlıurfa Chamber of Commerce and Industry also has training activities in order to support the industry and increase employment regarding the shortage of intermediate staff.
The province has the potential to be a manufacturing centre for food safety too. As the luckiest area of GAP (Southeastern Anatolia Project), Şanlıurfa expects to create a technological structure in agriculture with fertile lands such as Harran Plain and to raise awareness of farmers in this context.
In fact, “surface irrigation” is cited as the most pressing problem for the province. In Pandemic process also drawing attention to the risks arising about the safety of food all over the world, Şanlıurfa Chamber of Commerce and Industry Chairperson İbrahim Halil Peltek said, “Şanlıurfa should take action applying smart agriculture to adequate production throughout Turkey.”
‘Let the soil not flow away’
Peltek pointed out that thanks to the GAP, soils have gained water and made the following assessment:
“In the first 2 – 3 years, people said, ‘plenty of water, plenty of products’. Raising awareness projects for these lands and producers longing for water should have been carried out together. There is still a large mass that does not give up the surface irrigation that the world has already abandoned. Meanwhile, in the first years, our stratified soils, which were formed in 50 years, flowed away in one season.”
“Our harvest is less than other provinces and countries. Drip and sprinkler irrigation still awaits as the most pressing issue. For example, we can apply the water metre system in homes with a lower tariff in agriculture. We have 1 million hectares of irrigable agricultural land, 2 million 70 thousand population and 450 thousand Syrian population. We also have the infrastructure to feed our country. With the belief that agriculture is the basis of our development, we should protect our lands and be structured according to the latest developments in the field of agriculture,” Peltek added…
