The ways to improve the inputs productivity in Turkish agriculture

Abstract

There are 23.5 million hectares of the agricultural land in Turkey. However the size structures of farms is very unfavorable. The majority (62%) of the agricultural land is isolated on farms below 20 hectares. The average size of farm in Turkey is now about 5.7 hectares. The size structure of farms impede the improvement of the efficiency of the production factors such as land, labour and capital which are the most deficit factors in Turkey as in the other developing countries. To improve the productivity of agricultural inputs in Turkish agriculture the modernisation of production practices, improvement of the farm structure and farm-scale, scale of production as well as reduction of production costs, including the costs of machinery use, will be necessary. The reduction of costs related to the mechanisation can be performed by implementing a multi-farm machinery use systems. Farms with a larger scale of production have shortages of the labour-force and the contractor machinery services will be needed. On the other hand, smaller farms having sufficient labour-force but the serious impediment is size structure of farms. It can be said that, the support for agriculture should be concentrated first of all on the development of the rural infrastructure, providing the efficient and reliable technological, economic and marketing information system.