Minister Pakdemirli Attended the Agriculture and Food Summit

Minister Pakdemirli Attended the Agriculture and Food Summit Minister Pakdemirli attended the Agriculture and Food Summit. Participating in the opening ceremony, Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Bekir Pakdemirli made important statements. The Agriculture and Food Summit, organized by Bloomberg HT for the fourth time this year, was opened today. During the opening, Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Bekir Pakdemirli made important statements about agriculture-related figures. The statements of Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Bekir Pakdemirli, who answered the questions directed by İrfan Donat, are as follows; “Where there is an economy, consumption prices will increase regardless of the economy. Whether it is a Western or an Eastern economy, it will inevitably increase. Main axis should be this: It may be inevitable for prices to increase, but product prices should also support them. As of July 2020, I see that the agricultural input price index increased by 6.74 annually. However, when we look at the agricultural PPI, there is an increase of 17.36 percent as of August. This means that we have supported our farmers and producers above the increase in costs. The numbers do not lie, every number supports this. In other words, our agricultural gross national product, which was 216 billion liras, has become 275 billion lira. If we ask the manufacturers today, manufacturers will say the following; yes, diesel, seeds, fertilizers, saplings and feed, these are my main inputs and my costs are increasing. The 4 supports I will count to support the increase in these costs to some extent are approximately 18 to 20 percent of all supports; Diesel and fertilizer support, certified seed support, seedling and feed support. All of these are roughly 20 percent of the support we have given.   Our friends are doing the necessary work on this subject. As you know, when we brought the price of raw milk to 2.30 as of October last year, there is milk-feed parity. This milk feed parity is normally 1.30 a parity accepted by all stakeholders. Perhaps we increased this to 1.50 for the first time in a long time. In an environment where costs increase, there must be a margin so that it will save our producer when it falls below 1.30. We are working on this topic since this issue has come to light.   You know that there is predominantly private sector in beet. Turkish Sugar has approximately 20-25 percent efficiency. It is currently managed by the Ministry of Treasury and Finance. 2 institutions work for this. On the cotton side, the supports should be increased a little and there is a study for this in the new support package. We agree that we should support cotton a little more.   The announcement of the supports was a little late, we are aware of this, but let's not forget that we are still experiencing a pandemic period and an uncertainty is still managed. In managing this uncertainty, instead of only one gain in favor of the producer and the farmer, we may delay a little more. Unfortunately, we were late last year. In spite of the delay, we also achieved a serious increase in agricultural support budget. Work on agricultural subsidies has not been completed yet, but will be soon. We are planning several improvements in supports towards family businesses.   When you look at it with a perspective of the big producer and a small producer side, the job is to reach the market. You take care of this part, there is no big problem left. It is necessary to look at the numbers for the pandemic period. When you look at most of the second quarter, Turkey's growth or growth in other sectors that you will see a negative growth of 4 percent but there is a significant growth in the agricultural sector. In terms of wheat, barley, fruit, vegetables, meat, milk and other issues, we maintain the same performance we achieved in 2019. We actively follow up on every issue. In the last two years, we have made it our main goal for the producers to turn to profit without cooling. We have been actively tracking products for 2 years. I believe in the free market, but I think agricultural markets should also be regulated. Because I think you should definitely make this regulation in the time between production and consumption.   Laws are means, not ends. We have a law draft on contract production, but we created the digital agriculture market before contracting, which has turned it into a self-regulating area, where the buyer and seller will score each other, and the ecosystem will be created by itself. In other words, it is where buyers with high credit and sellers with high credit come together. Contractual production is a deal that needs to be concluded quickly. We targeted a structure like consumer courts. We will talk about this issue with the opening of the Assembly. However, there is an increase in deterrence, imprisonment and fines together with imitation and irritation. There is an increase in the influence of our Ministry in the regulation and supervision activities of the sugar market. There will be a law arrangement to increase the rate of domestic tobacco to 30 percent. We also plan to bring the water bill to the parliament. We need to move from plants that consume a lot of water to those that consume less. We need to make new investments in irrigation. Existing irrigation investments should also be rehabilitated.