Current Situation and Importance of the Family Farming in Agriculture of Turkey

Orhan Özçatalbaş, and Muhammad Imran

  Abstract: For long time family farming has been neglected by policy makers, after 2008 price hike in food prices world turned its eyes toward agriculture and importance of family farming as a large component of agriculture was highlighted further in 2014, by celebrating it as a year of family farming. Family farming is a life style and tradition which make it different from other types of farming. Family farming plays an important role in agriculture and overall economy of both developed and developing countries. Although share of agriculture is declining in overall GDP, still agriculture contributes a lot to employment, providing raw material to agro-based industries and export in Turkey. Agriculture structure of Turkey is scattered and dominated with family farms, almost 88% farms are family farms. Small farms less than 2 ha land is major category in family farms constituting 32.8% of total farms. Family farms are lifeline of agriculture in Turkey, on other hand many problems are being faced by these farmers like; insufficient Micro-credit operations, inefficiency of cooperatives in dealing with small farms, many intermediaries in marketing, women as a informal labor, and coordination problem among organization and institutes providing extension services to farmers.