Falkenmark

Since entering the 2000s, the concepts of justice and equality have been hollowed out year by year, respect for faith has withered, and our hope for recovery has been almost entirely destroyed. Turkey has forgotten that it won its sovereignty by fighting against internal and external occupiers, and it has largely lost its status as one of the few self-sufficient countries; it has come to resemble a sinking ship abandoned by those with the intellect, skill, and strength to leave. We no longer have the luxury of making mistakes or delaying in any area, be it justice, natural disasters, the economy, foreigners, agriculture, industry, social democracy, social justice, independent bureaucracy, freedom of belief, or any other concept.

It is also useless to wait for the day the ship's captain changes, as by that day, we will have no time left to think about what comes next. The current captain has already calculated and planned the handover day against a thousand possibilities. It is essential that we prepare and plan everything until the newly elected captain takes the seat, leaving them only with the task of signing. During this dead period we are in, new bureaucratic cadres must prepare the future with the highest possible consistency. Doing these things is certainly difficult, but waiting helplessly without doing anything is much harder. After all, while not everyone who searches finds what they are looking for, those who find are always those who search.

One of the issues we need to address with an emergency code is agriculture. It has become a tradition to see that we are in a more dire state every harvest season compared to the previous year. According to the June 2023 Agricultural Sector Report by the Banks Association of Turkey, our high labor force requirement during planting and harvesting continues to leave farmers helpless. The patch applied to the sector by not requiring work permits for those who come to our country under temporary protection status when they work as seasonal workers creates the perception that there is a need for cheap labor and immigrants in the country. Due to the fragmented and rugged structure of agricultural lands, the use of high-capacity machinery is not very possible, but it is unacceptable that our country, which produces its own aircraft and ships, has not been able to develop its own unique agricultural machinery. Moreover, an immigrant who works for one season consumes three meals a day for four seasons. In other words, we are essentially trying to solve the problem with a method that costs more than it is worth.

Compared to the world average, the Turkish farmer uses twice as much fertilizer. This rate triples in the Marmara Region and quadruples in the Mediterranean Region. We also double the world average in the use of agricultural pesticides. According to 2021 data, the production value, which is at the level of $123 per ton for grain products, $213 for vegetables, and $506 for fruit products, is far below the level we could reach. The average age of farmers, which is in the 30s in Europe, has exceeded 55 in our country, and there has been a serious decline in female employment in the agricultural sector over the last twenty years. The qualified majority of farmers would prefer not to plant or produce in the next term if they had another way to make a living.

According to the Falkenmark indicator, one of the most widely used indicators in the world regarding water scarcity, which is determined by the ratio of annual drinking water to the population, our country is on the verge of water scarcity and is currently experiencing water stress. Due to the continuously increasing water requirement in agriculture, the pollution of clean water resources, and the immigrants, who are said to be at the level of 15 million, it is predicted that water consumption will triple by 2050 compared to today. According to 2020 data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, while the share of agricultural water withdrawal in total water withdrawal is 70 percent on average in the world and 3.7% in the Netherlands, it is at the level of 87.2% in Turkey. In fertilizer use, while the Netherlands is in first place, Turkey is in eighth place. The yield loss in fruit and vegetable products, which constitute 80% of our country's direct agricultural product exports, is mostly caused by incorrect irrigation and primitive methods in pest control. In other words, it is possible for us to eliminate production losses by developing modernization and storage facilities.

Our agricultural lands are national capital, just like our coasts and rivers. Neither leaving them fallow without a justifiable reason nor producing less than their potential is a luxury we have anymore. In this context, the innovation to be brought to the agricultural sector must go beyond the level of support and reach the level of intervention. Thanks to our country's seasonal conditions, product adaptation is high, and therefore we have the opportunity to grow a wide variety of products, but agricultural lands are not as vast as is thought. This increases the production and transportation cost per unit. For this reason, Turkish agriculture must transition to organized and balanced production under public control and guidance. Otherwise, it is very difficult for us to gain a place in the world market with high costs.

According to the reports of agricultural engineers, the country's needs during the harvest period, and the potential price in the world market, whatever needs to be produced where in our country—that is, whatever is most efficient and profitable—must be encouraged economically and legally. It is clear that growing the agricultural economy and supporting it in an organized manner will create a serious settlement in agricultural regions and, subsequently, a need for services. With this breakthrough, it is also possible for the population waiting idly in big cities to spread across Anatolia. It is not a dream to carry out this project under a legal umbrella such as an Agricultural Mobilization Cooperative, for participating farmers to carry out the production of the product requested from them, for all requirements, control, and subsequent sales transactions to be carried out by the cooperative, for products to be insured by the cooperative for situations such as frost/epidemics, for the supervision of agricultural engineers at every moment of the process, for a purchase guarantee at a certain figure to be given to all participating farmers, and for the returns of the harvested products to be shared fairly between the cooperative and the farmer. Guiding the producer to produce the most profitable product according to the agricultural land they own, the country's needs, and the balances in the world market takes all worldly responsibilities off their shoulders, leaving the farmer with nothing to do but produce more efficiently.

Thanks to this organization, it becomes easier to design a plan for the next stage, which is the processing of products, the establishment of factories according to the product, the production of high-quality and high-value products, and branding. The positive response farmers have shown to the joint machinery park, seedling, fertilizer, and pesticide support provided by CHP municipalities for planting areas that remain small per enterprise serves as a demo for the organization above. Agriculture, like everything else, has become globalized, and tracking the value of the product to be produced in the world market during the harvest period is at least as valuable as the intervention of an agricultural engineer. After all, in our entirely globalized capitalist world, what we produce is not actually grain/fruit/vegetable; it is money!