Reviewing Agricultural Trade Policies
To Promote Intra-OIC Agricultural Trade
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Policies that are related to agricultural supply chains started to develop within the framework
of Turkey's EU accession through pre-accession grants with an aim to improve the structure of
Turkish agriculture in alignment with the EU standards. The Turkish bureaucracy realized the
importance of the EU programs and started managing Turkey’s own grant programs which are
comparatively faster, easier to implement and arguably more effective for agricultural supply
chains.
The difficulty in getting access to credit is a major obstacle for many smallholder farmers. One
interesting case that is underlined is a particular form of inefficiency observed in the process of
distributing supports. Some landowners rent a portion of their arable land to smallholder farms
but supports are obtained by the landowner and not by the farmer.
A new subsidy program in Turkey called “National Agriculture Project” has been in force since
2017. The project has an anticipated annual budget of nearly 4 billion USD. The project is now
implemented in 941 agricultural basins that are determined according to climate and soil. The
aim is to subsidize strategic crops, where each basin has a specific leading product (wheat,
barley, corn, rye, oats, triticale, cotton, paddy, rice, tea, tobacco, lentils, dry beans, chick peas,
safflower, soy bean, sun flower, canola, hazelnuts, olives, forage crops).
The issue of seeds has been given some emphasis. Turkey has not been very successful in
developing a strong set of national seeds, and this naturally creates dependency to foreign seed
licenses. Many agri-food exports exhibit this sort of import dependency, and there is a need for
a comprehensive national seed policy.
Lack of technical expertise is another major problem of smallholder farmers in Turkey, and long
term investments that effectively educate them in the fields of processing, packaging, marketing
and transportation techniques are necessary. Cooperatives and chambers stand out here as
important market institutions that can contribute to this sort of knowledge transfer. In general,
targeting small scale agricultural systems through public-private partnerships, increased public
research, and innovative and integrated applications strengthen agricultural knowledge
generation. Such dimensions of agricultural learning at the farmer level is essential to
successfully open national agricultural markets to international competition. Turkish
agricultural policy has become increasingly aware of the importance of such science and
technology related aspects of support mechanisms.
In the Turkish case, there are active and well-managed cooperatives. But there exist too many
newly established small cooperatives that target the entire sector. Such an inefficient
proliferation of cooperatives result in losses of time and energy as each new cooperative
necessarily starts from the scratch. Supporting the growth of existing larger cooperatives,
instead of promoting new and small ones, is possibly the first-best strategy. Processes must be
transparent and free of crony practices or nepotism that would harm the need-based, equitable,
selective and effective distribution of agricultural supports.
Finally, with regards to agricultural supply chains, another major policy tool worth mentioning
is the ongoing project on “Reducing the post- and pre-Harvest Losses.” Turkey is the pioneer
country among all OIC member countries in implementing policies to reduce food losses and
waste. There exist regulations on warehouses and marketplaces, and some NGOs such as the
Turkey Waste Prevention Foundation (TISVA) contribute to the imperative of reducing food
waste.