Demand outstripping supply

Domestic food consumption is also growing, as the country’s 78 million people become more affluent and demand more of everything. Turkey’s farmers cannot produce enough, leading to a woeful undersupply, particularly of meat and dairy products.  

Beef is a good example of the scale of the shortfall, with over 100,000 head of live cattle as well as carcase imports, from South America, Australia and the EU (57,000 tonnes in 2015). 

These issue have galvanised Turkey’s national and regional Governments to support farmers and farmer co-operatives to increase farm size and productivity and, crucially, to meet European standards for food safety, animal welfare and the environment.

Turkey’s cultivated land area totals 24.5 million ha, however, the average farm size is just 5.9 ha, making the supply chain very fragmented at farm level. Two years ago Turkey’s land laws were changed to favour one child inheriting a family’s land, where previously all children benefited from their share. This is already creating much needed agglomeration in the industry.

Government subsidies are wide-ranging, including the provision of 0% loans for young farmers, incentives for reaching EU production standards and up to 50% towards farm machinery purchases.

There are headage payments for importing Holstein, Brown Swiss and Simmental breeding stock, for reaching herd health targets and direct subsidies for volume of production. 

Policy shifts are also improving commerciality, for example, in 2000, the hugely important Turkish co-ops were legally allowed to become autonomous, making them more strategic and market focused. 

Tire Sűt, is one example - a dairy and meat co-operative in Tire County near Izmir that manufactures a cheese similar to feta, yoghurt, a popular salty yoghurt drink called Ayran and UHT milk; it also processes meat into salami-style sausages. Tire Sűt has over 2,000 producer members and collects over 300 tonnes of milk/day. Many of these producers will be small, reflecting Turkey’s average herd size of just 4-5 cows, each yielding circa 3,100 litres/day.