Farmers grow fewer varieties due to high costs, climate change

Farmers grow fewer varieties due to high costs, climate change

ISTANBUL
Farmers grow fewer varieties due to high costs, climate change

Increasing costs and climate-induced damages are pushing farmers toward crop varieties that require less labor and money.

Haberin Devamı

Noting that input costs have become quite high, especially in large fields, growers are also looking for methods to reduce costs to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

The output of some products declined significantly with farmers switching to other crops due to climate-driven extreme heat and flood as well as low demand against the previous year's high production.

The prices of seasonal vegetables remain very high throughout the winter months. Although prices have fallen slightly in the last few weeks, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, leeks and spinach have seen their highest prices ever.

Farmers are not interested in experimenting with varieties grown in different countries, unlike in previous years.

Growers in the Çukurova region could not make money from watermelon or tomato and citrus output suffered from climate change-related problems, said Mehmet Akın Doğan, president of the chamber of agriculture in the southern province of Adana's Yüreğir district.

“These types of fruits and vegetables require a lot of labor and money. Also, you can no longer predict what happens in the season. Due to the combination of these problems, farmers are shifting to ‘safe’ crops such as such as wheat, corn and cotton,” he explained.

This situation is no different in the Aegean region either.

Abdullah Şenol, president of the chamber of agriculture in İzmir's Turgutlu district, warned that farmers are growing fewer varieties.

“Farmers could not sell their products in the previous season, while their debts increased. Due to the high costs of growing vegetables, some of the farmers are planting less-costly wheat, while others will plant corn,” he said.

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