Turkey to adopt 'new agricultural model,' vows minister

Turkey will adopt a "new agricultural model" in a bid to increase agricultural yields by around 11 billion Turkish Liras ($3.7 billion), Food, Agriculture and Livestock Minister Faruk Çelik said in a televised interview on Sept. 21. 

"We will reveal which subsidies will be offered to which products in the new basin-based model within the next couple of days," Çelik said on private broadcaster NTV, adding that details will be announced by Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım. 

"We have defined 41 basins. If producers do not crop a series of pre-defined products to a basin, they will not be able to benefit from subsidies … We aim to turn small fields into bigger ones in order to increase productivity and enable producers to earn more than they do now," he added. 

Çelik said an increase of around 11 billion liras is expected in annual yields once the transformation is completed in the system. 

He also noted that agricultural production reached 117 million tons over this year, with a 2 percent increase compared to the previous year. 

"We saw a slight decline in wheat production due to drought, but we reached around 20.5 million tons of output in wheat production, which was enough to meet our demand," Çelik said.
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