Published 10 Feb,2021 via Hürriyet Daily News - Cultivation areas across Turkey have narrowed dramatically over the recent years, while hikes in food prices on a global scale are making it harder to import agricultural products, a former official has warned.
“We have 15.3 million hectares [153,000 square kilometers] of lands under cultivation and 2 million hectares of non-cultivated lands. Thus, some 15 percent of the total cultivable lands stay unused,” said İsmail Kemaloğlu, a former general manager of the Turkish Grain Board (TMO), an agency that oversees the Turkish agricultural product markets.
“If we had produced wheat on those [idle] lands, we would have yielded 6 million tons of grain,” Kemaloğlu told daily Hürriyet while pointing that Turkey’s annual import bill of nearly 3 million tons of wheat is worth up to $750 million.
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Hurriyet Daily News