‘Farmers have lost 80 percent of their crops, food crisis is imminent in Turkey’

* Photo: Canva

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Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Mersin MP and Agriculture Commission Spokesperson Rıdvan Turan has criticized the agricultural policies of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), raising concerns that farmers have been discarded in the face of multinational companies.

"Small-scale farming has been eliminated. Hundreds of thousands of farmers have abandoned their land, migrated to cities and become unemployed," he has noted, underlining that the ruling AKP has done away with society's access to healthy and cheap food products.

'Traditional farming has been eliminated'

HDP's Rıdvan Turan has warned that a food crisis is awaiting Turkey. Turan has stated, "With the Law on Seeds introduced in 2016, the use of heirloom seeds, which are considered to be one of the fundamental building blocks of traditional farming, has been banned; the crops produced by multinational companies, not those of farmers, are bought now."

Turan has further indicated that "the poisons offered to people as pesticides in order for the seeds bought from multinational companies to be fertile are detrimental to human and natural life," raising concerns that "they have now become an indispensable element for farmers."

"On the other side, with the use of chemical fertilizers, traditional farming has been eliminated, in a sense," he has added.

'Crops are thrown into waste in protest'

According to Turan, "farmers are now unable to do farming as a result of drought, in addition to the economic crisis and increase in foreign exchange rates, accompanying the agricultural policies of the AKP."

"Farmers, with the inputs, have been made dependent on multinational companies," HDP's Rıdvan Turan has said, briefly adding:

"In the face of input prices that have increased as a result of this dependence, farmers have been indebted to private and public banks as well as to the Agricultural Credit Cooperatives and loan sharks. Farmers' debt to public and Agricultural Credit Cooperatives has topped 150 billion lira."

HDP Mersin MP Rıdvan Turan has stressed that "farmers who grow crops in different regions of Turkey, but are unable to sell them are now protesting the AKP's policies by throwing their crops into waste." He has said, "While thousands of farmers' land, tractors and property are sequestered, some farmers who cannot pay their debt commit suicide."

Firms and unearned income relations

Further in his statement, Turan has indicated, "Having lost 80 percent of their crops due to drought, farmers are protesting the AKP's failure to develop policies against all these unfavorable conditions."

"Food crisis is imminent," Turan has warned, adding, "We are against multinational companies and unearned income relations; we are on the side of our farmers who grow their crops amid all these hardships. We believe we can solve the problems faced by our farmers in collaboration." (CA/DŞ/SD)