Tag: agriculture

  • Turkey, Europe’s biggest in agriculture

    Turkey, Europe’s biggest in agriculture

    Turkey, Europe’s biggest in agriculture

    Turkish Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek said that Turkey ranked the first in Europe and seventh in the world in the aspect of agricultural growth.

    Simsek said that total support reserved for agriculture was envisioned to be increased 17.8 percent from 11.1 billion Turkish lira to 13.1 billion TL in 2013. It had been only three billion TL in 2002, he added.

    Agricultural gross domestic product, which had been 23.7 billion USD in 2002, increased to 61.8 billion USD in 2011, said Simsek.

  • Bulgaria, Greece Must Unite against Macedonia, Turkey in Agriculture

    Bulgaria, Greece Must Unite against Macedonia, Turkey in Agriculture

    Bulgarian Minister of Agriculture and Foods Miroslav Naydenov. Photo by BGNES

    photo_verybig_147702

    Bulgaria and Greece should team up to offer strong competition in the area of agriculture against non-EU neighbors Macedonia and Turkey, argued Bulgarian Agriculture Minister Miroslav Naydenov.

    Saturday Naydenov visited Greek livestock breeding exhibition Zootechnia in Thessaloniki.

    “There is a competition pressure in agriculture on the part of Turkey and Macedonia, who are not part of the EU and their agriculture sectors can enjoy privileges not available to agriculture producers in the EU,” said the Bulgarian minister in an interview for ANA-MPA.

    “We are neighbors with Greece and our ambition is to be able to increase mutual exchange,” stressed Naydenov.

    The Bulgarian Agriculture Minister noted that Greek agriculture companies already have the established practice of using Bulgarian raw products, and suggested that this can be boosted.

    He also called for an increased trade exchange of produce, with more Bulgarian grain products to be imported in Greece, and more Greek fruit and vegetables to be imported in Bulgaria.

    In particular, Naydenov stressed that Bulgaria has still work to do in the absorption of EU subsidies in agriculture to achieve the full potential of the sector.

    Tags: greece, Greek, Thessaloniki, Miroslav Naydenov, agriculture, greece, turkey, EU, subsidies

    via Bulgaria: Bulgaria, Greece Must Unite against Macedonia, Turkey in Agriculture – Bulgarian Min – Novinite.com – Sofia News Agency.

  • 8 Lessons for America from Anatolia

    8 Lessons for America from Anatolia

    Ellen Freudenheim

    Freelance Author, Activist

    Sustainable Farming, Organic Food: 8 Lessons for America from Anatolia, Turkey

    American college graduates are drifting back to the second oldest profession in the world: farming.

    Liberal arts grads, including kids with pricey degrees from Princeton and Wesleyan, are choosing to work on small, green-minded farms, reports a recent New York Times article.

    Punting on entry level jobs and office drudgery, they instead are wading up to their proverbial elbows in hay and manure, engaging in physical labor, and getting a graduate seminar from Mother Nature.

    The allure of an environmentally responsible, low-pesticide kind of agriculture is a logical outcome of the eco-conscious gestalt that partially defines this new generation.

    The romance of raising one’s own food is just a baby step from the slow food movement, “edible schoolyards” projects, and Michelle Obama’s White House garden. It’s related to campus concern over the climate crisis, the substitution of fast food for “real food,” and the sad oxymoron of food insecurity for the obese poor. Oh, and add to that list the crummy politics and perversely unhealthful financial incentives underpinning global agribusiness.

    It may seem weird to the parental units, but sustainable farming is in.



    Un-Fast Food in Sukran’s Garden
    In mid-September, I visited western Anatolia in Turkey where such ideas as “small farm,” “organic,” and “locally-grown” are so old hat they predate the fez. And from that trip, some words of wisdom for young American wanna-be farmers with sustainability on their minds:

    Lesson #1: Plan Ahead
    While tourists muse on the Roman ruins of Ephesus, heedless of where our next meal will come from, rural Turkish women are reenacting a timeless rite of survival: preparing the harvest bounty for the winter. During the still-warm autumn months, it’s not uncommon to see small groups of women working outside their homes, using canoe-length wooden paddles to stir food in huge metal vats cooking over a wood fire.
    Moral of the story: If you’re not going to rely on the supermarket (or restaurants, or mom’s fridge), then you have to plan ahead.

    Lesson #2: Keep It Simple

    The vats in question — some three feet deep and equally as wide, almost as big as a Sultan’s tub — are filled with the same burbling red sauce as last year, and the year before. Tomato sauce is an Anatolian staple, used in a popular cold green bean dish called taze-fasulye, and a thousand and one varieties of lamb stew. Let American foodies fiddle with the recipe, worrying over the melding of the complex flavors of truffles, shallots and wine. Turkish tomato sauce is healthful, but couldn’t be more basic: stewed tomato, cooked either with or without hot green peppers, salt, some herbs.

    If you’re aiming at sustainability, you might need to forsake fancy.

    Lesson #3: A College Education Isn’t Enough
    One of the women I met, Sukran, showed us the well-tended garden of her stone and adobe house. But first, hospitality. Over glasses of ice-cold fresh buttermilk, we take measure of each other: a shorts-wearing, college-educated New Yorker lathered in sunscreen and casually carrying an iPad, camera and iPhone, and a deeply tanned, traditional Muslim grandmother in traditional Anatolian baggy pants, floral print head shawl, and for extra coverage, a baseball cap. She has no Wi-Fi. We connected at about the only physical place where she wasn’t covered, the eyes.

    We both love providing healthy meals to our families — but only one of us knows how to do so from a garden.

    Bottom line: You need more than a college education to how to wring enough from an acre or two to feed the family year-round.

    Lesson #4: If You Want to Eat What You Sow, Think Systems
    On a quick tour of Sukran’s garden. She’s growing squash (the pulp is used for stews, flowers for salads, salted seeds for snacks); pumpkins (for pies and seed-snacks); tomatoes; robust Yukon-like potatoes; red, green and little hot green peppers, and beans. Dotted through the garden are trees: almond, apricot, pear, apple and cherry. Nuts are used in sweets and cooking. Grapes and fruits are eaten fresh in season, juiced and jellied. A beehive sits in the middle of the garden buzzing with activity. Olive trees are nearby.

    2012 09 30 ApricotsdryingonahomeroofTurkey
    Apricots are drying on the flat house rooftop (see photo), as are grapes.

    Meat, milk and cheese come from goats, lamb and seven cows, are kept nearby. Huge packets of meat are stashed in one of five freezers, the only obvious nod to modernity.

    The garden is as tightly laid-out as the architectural plan for a condo conversion. And, Sukran is operating with a food processing timetable that’s probably stored, like a spreadsheet, in her head.


    Lesson #5: Sustainable Gardening Takes Multiple Hands

    The extended family — Sukran and her husband, two sons and their wives and grandchildren — live together and participate in both food production and consumption. It may not take a village, but serious, sustainable home gardens big enough to feed a family require more than two hands.


    Lesson #6: Plan a Winter Vacation in Florida to Recover from Making Hay While the Sun Shines

    “You work very hard,” I say. Sukran nods, and replies,” In winter, I sleep for five months.” Clear-eyed and handsome, she looks much older than her 61 years.

    Raising your own food is not a cakewalk.

    Lesson #7: Don’t Underestimate How Much Skill and Knowledge Are Needed

    As urbanites with a fondness for restaurant dining, it’s obvious that successful, sustainable home gardening requires skills and a broad kind of practical knowledge that we lack.


    Lesson #8: “God’s Gift”

    Humbled, we thank our impromptu hostess for her hospitality. “You are God’s gifts,” replies Sukran quickly, referring to the belief that strangers who show up out of the blue appear for a reason, and to whom, therefore, a gracious welcome is due.

    Her words are more than pleasantries.

    Faith and optimism are important ingredients in a lifestyle in which food for sustenance depends not on what time the local Whole Foods store closes, but on rain, sun and natural elements beyond one’s control.


    Recipe for Change: The Sustainability Thing
    Sukran’s garden has some retro appeal as an alternative to the American way of “doing” food, though obviously American women aren’t going to spend 24/7 in their home and garden, as she does.

    Still, this Anatolian home farmer has nailed what, in Brooklyn one might call “the sustainability thing.”

      • She’s living a physically active and environmentally sustainable life, raising and eating home-grown organic produce.

     

      • Her family heats water on their roof with solar power, using government-subsidized solar panels.

     

      • Recycling cow dung and nitrogen-rich pigeon droppings as manure, they harness a rich natural ecosystem.

     

      • Their food security is independent of wages or agribusiness and leaves a small carbon footprint.

     

    • The family members’ interdependence may be emotional, but it is also based in tangible economic necessity.

    So here’s a recipe for change: Toss into a Sultan-sized vat the kind of traditional home farming know-how that makes Sukran’s garden bloom. Flavor with modern technology, wifi, metrics, CSAs and community gardens. Get some smart farmer kids with Princeton degrees to stir over a hot flame, fueled by growing unease over the quality of our food supply and the obesity epidemic.

    With luck, they’ll cook up a green stew of 21st-century sustainable, organic gardening projects that appeal to the appetites of American suburbanites and city dwellers.

    Because, for Americans, overstuffed with fast food and pesticide-rich produce as we are, an accessible bridge back to a healthier, more local food supply would, indeed, be God’s gift.

  • Bulgaria to build a fence along Turkish border

    Bulgaria to build a fence along Turkish border

    The Bulgarian Government will finally build a fence along the border with Turkey, after a second outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) since January has threatened local farmers with devastation, Bulgarian media reported.

    turkey border fence

    The decision was taken on March 30 2011, Agriculture Minister Miroslav Naidenov said.

    Hundreds of farmers in the southeast of Bulgaria, an area close to Turkey and recently ravaged by repeated outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease, have vowed to defend their animals, saying they would rather be killed first than have their animals destroyed after another outbreak of FMD struck last week.

    The stockbreeders wrote a lengthy letter to Kristalina Georgieva, European Commissioner for international co-operation, humanitarian aid and crisis response, in which they demanded that they are provided with real assistance; furthermore, they demanded to know why the Government was hesitating and refusing to build a fence along the Turkish border after the first FMD outbreak in January

    After the January outbreak, Bulgarian authorities deliberated and hesitated about the fence project, while the authorities in Turkey were staunchly opposed to it, saying there was “no FMD” in their country, and the fence simply served as a division between Christianity and Islam. But Bulgarian officials disagreed, saying there were more than 1000 confirmed sites of FMD in Turkey.

    “We will build a fence along the border which will prevent animals from venturing freely into Bulgaria, it is about limiting their movement,” Naidenov said.

    This time the Bulgarian Government decision reportedly is a “firm one” having admitted that “it was taken too late” but as far as the farmers in the region are concerned, it is better late than never.

    Thousands of farm animals in the Strandzha region have been marked earmarked for destruction as the new outbreak of foot-and-mouth FMD was detected in the region of Sredets last week.

    But the operation to cull the animals was being hampered by a protest organised by stock-breeders who are accused the Government of incompetence and threatened to fight “and risk their own lives” to save their animals.

    via Bulgaria to build a fence along Turkish border – official – Bulgaria – The Sofia Echo.

  • Turkish agricultural production over-relying on seed imports, report says

    Turkish agricultural production over-relying on seed imports, report says

    ANKARA – Vatan

     Turkey imports nearly 4.7 tons of tomato seeds, according to a report by the Ankara Chamber of Commerce. AA photo
    Turkey imports nearly 4.7 tons of tomato seeds, according to a report by the Ankara Chamber of Commerce. AA photo

    Turkey’s agricultural production is heavily reliant on seed imports, according to a recent report by the chamber of commerce in the capital city of Ankara. Turkey is paying the price for its low agricultural technology, the report says

    Turkey’s seed import costs have reached $860 million over the last eight years, according to a recent report from the Ankara Chamber of Commerce, or ATO.

    The country is “paying the cost of its low agricultural technology by importing seeds,” mainly from France, United States, Germany, the Netherlands, Germany and many other countries, the report said, adding that Turkish agricultural production was dependent on these imports.

    Turkey imports tomatoes seeds from France, cucumber, gherkin and watermelon seeds from the United States and cabbage seeds from Germany, the chamber’s report said.

    According to data from the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Ministry, Turkey produced 385,000 tons of seeds last year, 290,000 tons in 2008 and 324,000 tons in 2007.

    Insufficient production

    Although wheat ranked first on the ministry’s seeds production list at nearly 227,800 tons last year, Turkey’s annual wheat seed demand remains approximately 600,000 tons, the report said, thus meaning Turkish production has only been able to meet 40 percent of current demand.

    The ministry also said Turkey produced 36,000 tons of barley seeds, 29,000 hybrid corn seeds, 58,800 tons of potato seeds, 10,800 tons of cotton seeds, 9,300 hybrid sunflower seeds, 5,000 tons of rice seeds, and 2,700 tons of vegetable seeds in 2009.

    Top seed import: tomatoes

    The Turkish seed market posted a total value of $650 million last year with total imports worth roughly $158 million, according to official data.

    Turkey recorded total exports of $339 million between 2002 and 2008, but the total import of seeds reached $860 million over the same period, the report said.

    Moreover, Turkish seed imports reached $158 million while exports remained at $70.7 million last year, the report said, adding that tomatoes led the way on the imports list.

    Accounting for nearly 40 percent of total vegetable production in Turkey, tomato cultivation in the country heavily relies on foreign seeds.

    Turkey ultimately produced nearly 10.7 million tons of tomatoes last year, the report said, adding that most of the seed demand was met by importing nearly 4.7 tons of tomatoes seeds, mainly from France.

    Cucumbers and gherkins, meanwhile, were second on the report’s list. Turkey grew nearly 1.74 million tons of cucumbers last year and produced 8.98 tons of cucumber seeds. In the same year, the country imported nearly 37.2 tons of cucumber or gherkin seeds, mainly from United States.

    Despite the heavy reliance on imports, ATO noted that there had been promising developments in the production of local seeds, such as those of green peppers. According to the ministry, nearly 80 percent of green pepper production is conducted with Turkish pepper seeds.

    Turkey imported 1.83 million tons of green pepper seeds and exported nearly 11.8 tons of green pepper seeds in 2009, according to the ministry.