Agriculture and Rural Affairs Minister Mehdi Eker has said his ministry will hire 2,500 specialists to be employed in villages around the country where farming and stockbreeding are the mainstay of the economy.
Speaking at a press conference held in İstanbul on Saturday, Eker noted that they already have 5,000 such personnel employed in 5,000 villages and that their aim now is to improve the efficiency in agriculture and animal husbandry through direct and frequent contact with producers. “We will prioritize the villages with potential,” he added. The ministry hired 17,000 people — 6,500 of whom were engineers — in the largest wave of recruitment, in 2003, the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) first year in office after the general elections that were held in late 2002.
As part of his Saturday remarks, Eker also said his ministry will be renamed the Ministry of Agriculture and Food next year, a change that was approved by the relevant parliamentary commission as well as the Cabinet, he said.
On the specific issue of the high prices of red meat, Eker said he personally follows the prices on a daily basis in 13 locations to see if the thousands of tons of imported livestock have helped alleviate the troubling situation in the market. In that regard, he told reporters attending the conference that the cost of one kilogram of domestic red meat for a seller is around TL 14 but some supermarkets are making a hefty profit by selling it at TL 25 to 30.
“There is an issue that bothers my conscience. If someone is buying red meat for TL 14 per kilogram, they can sell it for up to TL 20 with a 30 percent margin of profit. But if this meat is sold for TL 25 at a supermarket, then this means the market is making an excessive profit. I am complaining about this to you. Ask your consciences. It cannot be legitimized by saying that we have a free market economy and sellers can sell at whatever price they feel like. There must be a measure of fairness,” he said.
Following the unexpected surge in prices, the government authorized the state-owned Meat and Fish Institution (EBK) to import livestock in April. The EBK then made large purchases from abroad and will continue to do so until its authorization expires at the end of next year. These moves, however, have fallen short of reducing the market prices by as much as expected.
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