Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Bekir Pakdemirli (PhD) attended the symbolic auctioning ceremony organized in the Izmir Commodity Exchange for bringing the first seedless raisins and dried figs of the season to the stock market.
Price Guarantee Support for Farmers
The development of agricultural commodity, the future of agricultural products in a structure that can catch the future should be designed, Pakdemirli (PhD) said and continued:
"I charged experts in the Ministry for agricultural insurances. I said, we give support to farmers, what if we stop giving those supports and give price guarantee instead of it. It will be very easy if we would have a stock market deep enough in Turkey. We are looking to the markets in USA due to the reason that we do not have this kind of stock markets yet. If the prices are parallel to the Turkey or repeat continuously we will bring those prices from foreign stock markets to our country as agricultural insurances. And we will say to the farmer: the price of your crop is 10 TL, if it will 8 TL, Ministry will pay the 2 TL difference."
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry emphasized the importance of the meeting of water and land. Minister Pakdemirli (PhD) also stated decision making system is faster with the new governmental system.
Work plan will be announced in October
Bekir Pakdemirli indicated that there are many areas to be developed in agriculture. Also, he said: "We are preparing a five-year business plan at the moment. Hopefully, we will share this plan will public in October. Our goal is to favor the producer and the consumer at the same time. We have two main aims as Ministry. The first one is to help protecting the producer from the effects of inflation. The second one is protecting the consumer."
He also mentioned that he was also trading grapes and figs in İzmir Commodity Exchange in the past and today he is still producing grapes in his family farm and therefore he knows this issues very well.
Mr. Pakdemirli highlighted that Turkey serves as a brand in the grape and fig sector and continued as:
"We need to invest in the brands. To increase the added value in agriculture there is a need for national brand.
Especially, it is not easy to develop a brand in sectors which has less added value such as agriculture without government support. We need to have a national brand. We need to market our agricultural products under this brand. Like Turkish Airlines. The state should make certain expenses. Our products should be more valuable. We should work on this issue."
"Some restrictions on exports might be realized if necessary"
Minister Pakdemirli said that we will always support the producers as Turkish Grain Board and Agricultural Credit Cooperatives and he continued:
"We continue to support fuel, fertilizer and biological control. We will increase these supports. We established a product monitoring system at the moment. It already exist but it was not very active in the past. If it's necessary for consumers to reach cheaper goods we will decrease the customs and apply some restrictions on exports. That's why we are using the necessary monitoring system. "
Minister Pakdemirli also replied the criticism made by some politicians, regarding the agriculture activities in Sudan, by the following statement "They ask questions like 'What is Turkey's business in Sudan?'. I would like to ask them 'What is China's, UK's or France's business in Africa?'. We see Sudan as a door to Africa. Sudanese people really like us. If we want to ensure food supply security, we must look at the future. We received 830 thousand hectares of land from Sudanese Government, which is equal to ten per cent of Turkey's irrigable lands. Our priority is meeting the needs of Turkey.".
After the speeches, Izmir Mercantile Exchange bought seedless raisins produced by Yusuf Avşar from Manisa for 350TL per kg and Aegean Exporters Association bought dried figs produced by Mustafa Gümüşoğlu from Aydin for 350TL per kg in symbolic auction directed by Izmir Mercantile Exchange Chairwoman Işınsu Kestelli.
After the ceremony, Minister Pakdemirli joined Historical Kemeraltı Construction Investment Inc.'s meeting which was established by foremost NGOs and investors of the city. The meeting was closed to press and organized in Historical Kemeraltı Bazaar