Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing industry

Business cycles

It is generally accepted that business cycles have a number of impacts on enterprises operating in the economy such as changing demand levels, need to expand or rationalise operations and personnel levels. It is generally observed that firms of different sizes respond to the business cycle differently. Some of these differences stem from differences in the types of economic shocks measured i.e. supply-sided shocks versus demand-sided shocks. In Turkish experience, smaller enterprises often gets impacted by the business cycles disproportionately as compared to the larger firms and this may well be attributed to the availability of credit and government subsidies during contractions. Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing industry is consisted of a large number of small sized farms (around 3 million are estimated to be operating) that makes the industry particularly vulnerable to economic contractions.

Seventh largest agricultural producer globally

Turkey was the seventh largest agricultural producer in 2013 globally whose agricultural output has been growing steadily since early 2000s, with the exception of 2007 and 2014 due to severe drought. Turkey is  a large crop producer, in particularly, horticultural products, it is the top world producer for hazelnuts, cherries, apricots, figs and quinces.

General growth in agricultural output

Since 2000s, there has been an increase in productivity in the industry mainly due to the use of high-yielding seeds despite decreasing land use. During the period of 2002-2017, production volumes in animal husbandry across all products has shown significant growth. During this period, in particularly red meat production showed an increase of 180 per cent growth.

Similarly, production of fruits in general increased significantly, with huge growth rates in cherry and pistachio. With regards to the production of fruits, beverages an spices crops, the picture growth picture has been mixed with some of the products realizing declines. In terms of cereals and other crops, production of sunflower, soybeans, paddy, corn and sugar beet has increased quite significantly whilst the production of lentils, tobacco, barley and chickpea declined.