During an event where he met with farmers as part of his meetings in Tokat, President Erdoğan stated that Türkiye is an important agricultural country, adding “Thanks to the strong infrastructure we have built over the last two decades, we have become a country with a self-sufficiency rate of 140 per cent, with no food supply issues.”
President Erdoğan stated that, while snowfall and cold weather continue to have an effect, particularly in the final days of the first month of spring, his visit to Tokat was truly unique, and he witnessed tremendous enthusiasm.
"As you know, every time someone opens their mouths in our country, they claim that agriculture in Türkiye is dead and gone, and the farmers are devastated," President Erdoğan said, pointing out that the country's largest subsidy to agriculture and husbandry, as well as significant production gains in every field, has been provided during their term in office.
President Erdoğan said that they initiated this process during his time as Prime Minister, and farmers appreciated the efforts.
President Erdoğan stated that they had paid approximately TL470 billion in subsidies over the last two decades in today's currency, and the agricultural subsidy budget for this year, which had previously been planned to be TL25.8 billion, was increased to TL29 billion, indicating that they will pay TL116 per decare to producers of wheat, barley, rye, oats, and triticale, including diesel, fertilizer, certified seeds, and additional input subsidies.
President Erdoğan stated that the agricultural produce amounting to TL337 billion demonstrates that the subsidies have been reimbursed.
President Erdoğan stated that compared to the last year, agricultural exports increased by 21% to $25 billion, while the international trade surplus increased by 31% to $7.2 billion, and went on to say:
"These figures are crucial in understanding where we are currently. Thanks to your hard work, we are the leading producer of vegetables and fruits in Europe. Thanks to the strong infrastructure we have built over the last two decades, we have become a country with a self-sufficiency rate of 140 per cent, with no food supply issues. During the time of our governments, we put 9,989 facilities into service by investing approximately TL300 billion in water. With whom are we doing this? We are doing it with our farmers, and we are doing it for our farmers. We doubled the number of dams built in the Republic's history by opening 654 new dams in our country, storing a total of 47 million cubic meters of water. There has never been anything like it in the Republic's history. As a result of these investments, we irrigated an additional 20 million decares of land, bringing our total irrigated agricultural area to 68.5 million decares. Thus, we increased our farmers' annual income by TL60 billion."
“We have planted around 6 billion saplings”
President Erdoğan said that they continue to work with all their might in the field of forestry and that they have planted around 6 billion saplings over the last two decades.
Stating that Türkiye ranks first in Europe and sixth in the world among countries that increased their forest cover the most, President Erdoğan said:
"This is the evidence. This is not a joke. All of it is documented. Naturally, some people dislike it. They are trying to instil panic in the nation with false information by using issues such as droughts, fires, wars and regional humanitarian crises as an excuse. I think you know who these are. Even though they know that Türkiye is the world's largest food exporter and that we import a sizable portion of the raw materials required for this, they try to mislead the public with their numerical manipulations. Unfortunately, there has been an atmosphere of panic recently, despite the fact that there has been no significant problem with sunflower oil. The same game is likely to be played in other fields. However, the situation in front of us is this: 5.6 million tons of the 8.1 million tons of wheat imported by our country for export-oriented food sectors last year originated from Russia and Ukraine."
Remarking that there is a similar picture in the import of barley, corn, pulp, bran, President Erdoğan noted:
"Therefore, the supply problems that may be caused by the Ukraine-Russia War have affected us, and they will continue to affect us, but the impact will be on exports, not on the bread on our table. Our food sector continues its search for other alternative sources of supply, especially in Kazakhstan, the US and Canada. We also hope that our country's balanced relations with both warring parties will prevent us from completely getting cut off from the region's supply of products. Additionally, our Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and Agricultural Credit Cooperatives are taking the necessary measures to plant sunflower and corn. Contracted production is planned for sunflower, amounting to 20 thousand tons of oil and 30 thousand tons of grain corn with our producers just in Tokat. 75% of sunflower seeds, amounting to 18 tons of oil, to be planted on an area of 35 thousand decares will be distributed with a grant. Thus, our sunflower and corn producers in Tokat will receive a total of TL12 million in production subsidy."
President Erdoğan added: "We want our farmers to concentrate their efforts on production in such a way that not a single centimetre of uncultivated land remains in our country. It is critical that we increase our production both to meet the needs of our domestic food sector and to fill any potential gaps in the European market. During the Russia-Ukraine War, nearly 50 of our ships were in the region during our meetings with both Mr Putin and Mr Zelensky, and they cleared the way for our ships, and they sent ships that were bringing all those products on their ways, such as sunflower oil and other grains, to our country and almost all of these ships reached our country.”
