Turkey becomes dependent on foreign agricultural products

Once referred to as a “grain silo,” Turkey has now become a prominent importer of agricultural products, a recent report compiled by a Turkish trade chamber has revealed.

 The Ankara Chamber of Commerce (ATO) drafted a report in which it said Turkey was importing a large number of agricultural products from over 100 countries including cotton, wheat, barley, rice, corn, tea, broad beans, garlic, bananas, chickpeas and lentils. “Turkey is becoming more agriculturally dependent on foreign sources every day,” ATO Chairman Sinan Aygün told reporters during a press conference in Ankara on Friday. He also asserted that the country’s agricultural production was not increasing in line with the rise in population.

The report shows that although it has agricultural land two times larger than the total area of Greece, Turkey imports cotton from Greece and the US, data that highlight serious problems in Turkey’s agricultural production and utilization of land. Turkey’s agricultural exports stood around $2 billion, and its imports were only $50 million at the beginning of the 1980s. In 30 years, these figures reached $4.3 billion and $4.5 billion.

Respectively, which means a twofold rise in exports and imports increasing by a factor of 90. According to data from the Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat), Turkey is only able to meet domestic demand in sugar beets, potatoes and chickpeas.  Turkey imports wheat from Russia, barley from France, rice from Egypt, corn from Ukraine and tea from Sri Lanka.

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Posted by ssm on Jul 10 2010 Filed under National Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.