Facilitating Smallholder Farmers’ Market Access
In the OIC Member Countries
80
TABLE 16: RENEWABLE INTERNAL FRESHWATER RESOURCES FOR SELECTED COUNTRIES IN
EUROPE, NORTH AFRICA, AND THE MIDDLE EAST
Source: FAOSTAT (FAO 2013).
Governance and institutions
DOMESTIC AGRICULTURAL POLICIES
In the past, Turkish agricultural policy was characterized by set commodity prices,
supported through government purchases and sales. The government heavily subsidized
farm inputs, including credit, while investing considerably in irrigation and other
infrastructure. The institutions administering this complex set of instruments included
State Economic Enterprises, Agricultural Sales Cooperative Unions (ASCUs), and state-
owned banks. A 2011 report by the OECD concluded that “financial losses due to
intervention purchasing by ASCUs, the Turkish Grain Board, the state-owned Tobacco
Enterprise and the state-owned Sugar Enterprise, coupled with borrowing by the State
Economic Enterprises from commercial banks at relatively high interest rates, were key
factors in the country’s overall economic turbulence in the 1980s and 1990s.”138
Its policy objectives have changed little, but Turkey started to rely more heavily on
markets to implement those objectives in 2001 through the Agricultural Reform
Implementation Project. Under that project from 2001 to 2008, Turkey restructured state-
owned enterprises and ASCUs and abolished the practice of administering commodity
prices. To ease the transition and prepare for EU accession, the government established a
National Farmers’ Registry System that allowed farming households to receive direct
income support that was de-coupled from production. The rationale for that policy change
was to allow farmers to respond to price signals when deciding what to produce, while
continuing to provide a level of income support similar to that received under the system
of commodity price supports.
138 OECD (2011b:10).
Country Cubic meters per capita Billion cubic meters
Turkey 3,083 227.0
France 3,056 200.0
Italy 3,003 182.5
Spain 2,405 111.2
Georgia 12,958 58.1
Greece 5,131 58.0
Morocco 899 29.0
Uzbekistan 557 16.3
Algeria 313 11.3
Tunisia 393 4.2
Saudi Arabia 85 2.4
Jordan 110 0.7
Qatar 30 0.1