Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey

  The goal of rural development investment projects is; to raise income and living standards in rural areas; achieve agriculture based industry intergration; support SMBs; increase food security; produce alternative avenues of income; develop pressurized irrigation systems; develop entrepreneurship capacity; supplying farmers with the new technological developments in agriculture; producing in regards to the market’s demands and lowering production costs.Experts drew attention to the possibility of restrictions on some provinces in case of accreditation problems for the Rural Development Association regarding the projects which will take place between 2011 and 2015 in 81 provinces. - Topics of Economic Investment Authorities stated that the topics of investment were related to the processing, storing and packaging of agricultural produce. According to this, among the available fields of investments are; new investments; the increase in capacity of the currently operational facilities and upgrading of their technologies; the completion of partial investments; the processing, packaging, storage of water produce along with vegetable and animal produce; the storage of agricultural produce (steel silos); cold air storage; alternative energy consuming green houses; alternative energy consuming production facilities; the processing, packaging of animal manure; modern investment facilities for sheep, goat and cattle; drip irrigation. - Supports Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs representatives stated that the rural development investments projects support program aims to bring the farmers and the new technologies developed for agriculture together as well as ensuring that higher quality, market-oriented production which will result in the facilitation of the work of our farmers and a decrease in production costs. They reported that while only 4 types of machine support were available in 2007, now this number has increased to 35 and that everyone can apply for a machine support each year. According to the information, applications for irrigation have doubled and the total support given for the projects have reached almost 916 million TL. - Licensed storage The second item on the agenda was the Licensed Storage and Product Expertise Exchange. A communiqué on the subject was presented by the President of the Board of Directors of TMO-TOBB Agriculture Products Licensed Storage Inc. Yahya Toplu; “For many years agricultural commerce has been pioneered by TOBB and TMO. When the supply-demand balance is disturbed on the production end, the producers suffered. The produce had to be brought to the market within 45 days. There was no storage to speak of. As with the whole world, the grading of products has been brought and the relevant legislature has been passed in 2005. This was a high level investment and for a long time the private sector did not take part. Together TMO and TOBB formed Licensed Storage Inc. Polatlı acted as the pilot area.As work on licensed storage continued the establishment and operations of the cereal and cotton producers’ associations, licensed storages, exporters and exchanges were observed.