Changing Structure of Turkish Agriculture

Professor Resat Aktan, whose memory is honoured by this paper, occupied a unique place in the history of Turkish agriculture--teacher, scholar, Minister of Agriculture, and long-time Turkish delegate to the IAAE. Among his many accomplishments, he led two landmark agricultural surveys which serve to chronicle the development of modern Turkish agriculture. While Ataturk had set Turkey on the road to modernization of agriculture, the end of World War II still found Turkish wheat farming little different from what it had been centuries earlier. In 1947, for example, there were only 1,556 tractors. However, a strong government commitment to the development of agriculture and massive Marshall Plan assistance were to change this situation drastically. By 1956, over 40,000 tractors had been imported, along with associated ploughs, harrows, grain drills, and combines. Land devoted to cereals climbed rapidly from 7.6 million hectares in 1947 to 13 million hectares in 1955. While cereal production rose sharply, yields remained stagnant until the late 1960s. Since then, they have steadily risen. By 1980, Turkey had become a consistent and substantial cereal exporter. What follows is an examination of the nature of Turkey's 30-year transformation from traditional to modern commercial cereal production.