The market, the bazaar!

We might all go hungry next year!

Don't mutter, 'Oh come on, it's not that bad.' The issue isn't just that the government is fueling inflation to transfer capital to its own cronies, deliberately and intentionally forcing us all to live at the poverty line.

Agricultural production in the country is almost at a breaking point. Fields, vineyards, and orchards are not being planted. The most fertile lands are overgrown with weeds up to our knees.

Wheat fields are completely empty.

In any case, the villagers don't have much concern about planting or harvesting anymore.

Not only does what they grow not fetch a good price—often left to rot in the field—but they also manage to get by somehow on the salaries provided by the state, thanks to the 'Chief'.

One receives a pension, another a widow's or orphan's pension, and another gets state aid for caring for a disabled child...  Even if they don't farm, there is still soup boiling on the stove at home.

Village coffeehouses are packed. It is clear that most no longer want to endure the hardships of rural life for pennies. Young people, with smartphones in their hands, are either watching TikTok videos or posting 'stories' on Instagram. Their only concern is to go to the city and find a job with social security.

Despite everything, those who still intend to farm are already full of regret.

Recently, farmers blocked the Bursa-Balıkesir road in protest because the tomatoes they grew for paste were not profitable, and they could not even find buyers for one-fifth of their production costs.

In Karacabey, which produces 65 percent of Turkey's tomatoes for paste, the produce rotted in the fields; in Yenişehir, no one even showed up to harvest the watermelons, peppers, and beans.

The wheat stalks I used to see along the road while traveling between Ankara and Bursa during my student years are gone now. Hundreds of thousands of acres of land are completely empty.

Three or four months ago, I met an uncle named Muhsin by chance at a gas station in Polatlı; he was a farmer. He and his brother had about 10,000 acres of land.

'We don't plant anymore,' he had said.

I was very surprised. How could a farmer leave 10,000 acres of land empty? For those of us who have spent our whole lives waiting for a salary to be deposited at the beginning of each month, such wealth was unimaginable.

"Those who don't suffer the hardships of the soil don't understand," he had begun. He then complained, "They are buying wheat from outside, from here and there. You're a journalist, go and see who is bringing this wheat into the country. Whose men they all are... They are the ones making the money, and we are the ones suffering the hardship. The money they pay for the harvest doesn't even cover the cost."

I don't know how much this reflects Turkey as a whole, but along the road stretching from Ankara to the south of the Marmara region, and from there to the Edremit Gulf, the picture is more or less the same.

Let's come to the part of the issue that concerns us, that is, the consumer.

When we go out to the markets and bazaars, we see that everything is exorbitantly expensive.

One would expect the market to be a little cheaper in Edremit, Havran, and Burhaniye, where the land is so fertile that if you planted a stick, a tree would grow, right?

Unfortunately, no.

The prices at the Edremit Altınkum market are almost the same as those in the markets of luxury neighborhoods in Ankara.

For example, a kilo of fresh green beans and black-eyed peas is 100 TL, and okra is 120 TL.

A bunch of purslane is 15-20 TL, sea beans are 20-30 TL, sorrel is 15 TL, and dandelion greens are 20 TL. A single head of lettuce is 30 TL.

Tomato prices vary between 10 and 50 TL depending on the variety. Good quality paste tomatoes are 15 TL per kilo, those starting to spoil are 10 TL, Çanakkale field tomatoes are 30-40 TL, and pink highland tomatoes are around 40-50 TL.

In Karacabey, located 163 kilometers or 1 hour and 45 minutes away from Altınkum, paste tomatoes left to rot in the field cannot find buyers at 1.5-2 TL, yet they are sold for four times their cost in Edremit. Similarly, Çanakkale tomatoes hit the market at four to five times their production cost, which is at most 10 TL.

Peppers are no different from tomatoes.

In Yenişehir and Bergama, where villagers lament that they cannot find anyone to harvest them, pointed peppers are sold for 40 TL per kilo in the markets of the Edremit Gulf. 

Garden peppers are sold for 30 TL, chili peppers for 50 TL, and bell peppers for 60 TL.

Eggplant is 30 TL and carrots are 50 TL per kilo.

Zucchini prices range from 20-30 TL per kilo, while cucumbers vary between 25-40 TL.

A bunch of greens like parsley, arugula, or dill costs around 15-20 TL.

While producers in Hatay are uprooting their lemon trees because they aren't profitable, 6 lemons are being sold for 100 TL at the Altınkum market. Yet, last April, a kilo of lemons was 15 TL at the Edremit market.

Why is this happening, what is going on in between, and how do prices multiply? Let's leave the answers to these questions to the experts, those who know agriculture and farming, and continue to report on what catches a journalist's eye.

Fruits are no different from vegetables.

Since the beginning of summer, the price of a kilo of cherries has rarely dropped below 80-100 TL, depending on the variety. Even in Edremit, which is surrounded by vineyards and orchards, grapes cost between 50-80 TL per kilo. While nectarines and peaches are sold for 60-80 TL, pears find buyers for 70-90 TL and apricots for 60-80 TL, depending on the variety—that is, if they can find buyers at all.

Because people going to the market can no longer fill their shopping bags to the brim like they used to.

They buy just enough to satisfy their children's cravings and head home. That's it.

Moreover, these are the prices during the peak season. The thought of what will happen in the winter is enough to make one's spirit shrink.

Even the expatriates who have kept the economy of the Edremit Gulf afloat until today are no longer inclined to take their wallets out of their pockets.

Turkey has become even more expensive than Germany.

Yet, once upon a time, the prices of goods and services in the Edremit Gulf were always set according to them.

Those days are now far behind us.

The government's misguided economic and agricultural policies, the decline and reduction of the agricultural workforce over the past 22 years, inflation, the daily rise in fuel prices and the resulting transportation costs, middlemen, taxes, and so on; these largely explain the market that is currently ablaze, but before I conclude this piece, I want to focus on 'opportunism'.

While walking through the Edremit market last winter, I saw an elderly village woman selling saffron milk cap mushrooms and asked her how much they were.

They were 300 TL per kilo. (You read that right, three hundred Turkish Liras)

After expressing my astonishment by saying 'How come?', I said, 'Look, my dear sister, you get up in the morning, leave your house, step out the back garden gate into the forest, and without even walking 30-40 meters, you collect 20 kilos of saffron milk cap mushrooms in 45 minutes, or an hour at most. You throw the sack onto the village minibus and bring it to the market. Let's say the money you give the driver is 40 TL, 20 each way. Even if you only sell half the sack, it makes 3,000 TL. What costs do you have that you are selling them so expensively?' I tried to ask.

Our sister furrowed her brows and snapped at me, saying, 'You don't know, do you, how many liras the dollar has become now!'

Before I could even say, 'What do you have to do with the dollar anyway,' she cut me off.

She started with the price of olive oil and ended with the price of cheese; talking about how the price of feed is this much, and straw is that much.

I tried to say, 'But what does all this have to do with mushrooms?'

I fell silent when I got the reply, 'I guess you don't watch cooking shows. Look, they explain in Urla how much a kilo of these mushrooms costs.'

While trying to forget my swollen tonsils from swallowing hard as I looked at the mushrooms, the owner of the stall across the road called out.

'Ayşe sister, these mushrooms paid for three weddings and a charity event last year. Those who buy, buy... You just go ahead and lament your poverty.'

There was nothing to say. I bought some cauliflower and potatoes and went home.

Jokes aside, if things continue this way, and if the people of my country do not rid themselves of this mentality that is dragging them into disaster in every sense, it seems the country will face a serious famine in the coming years.

Once upon a time, we boasted about being a self-sufficient country in the world; now, we are anxious about the possibility of going hungry in the years ahead.

The purchasing power of the money we have is melting away day by day. But even if we have money, one day we might not be able to find tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, or perhaps even bread to buy; and that is when we will say 'all is lost' and bring our article to an end.