THE AGRICULTURAL STRUCTURE OF TURKEY IS CHANGING

Seyfettin Gürsel and Ulaş Karakoç

The agricultural structure of Turkey has changed considerably since 2001, in contrast to the relative stagnation between 1991 and 2001. The percentage of the number of enterprises working on an area less than 20 decares has decreased from 33.4 to 24.8 percent. This is indicative of the elimination of small-scale enterprises in agriculture and partly of a consolidation of medium and large-scale ones. The increase in the average scale of an enterprise has partly been boosted by renting of land by medium and large enterprises. On the other hand, this has taken place at the expense of further fragmentation of land parcels.

A parallel development has been a change in the crop pattern. The smallest and the largest enterprises have a tendency towards cultivating fruits instead of traditional field crops. Moreover, total irrigated area nearly doubled since 2001, a sign of increasing land productivity and continuing technological change, the deep rooted structural problems of the sector notwithstanding.

doc. ResearchBrief024

pdf. ResearchBrief024