Turkey's Changemakers: Farmers open up to the world through Internet

Sabanci Foundation Turkey’s Changemakers Program continues to share the unique stories of extraordinary people who contribute to the social development. This week’s Changemaker is Tulin Akin who founded the Agricultural Marketing Platform that brings the farmers together with the customers on the virtual platform.

On the Agricultural Marketing Platform, Tülin Akın shares agricultural contents that will ease the life of farmers and sends these contents to farmers through information technologies.

The farmers create their online profile on the website of the Agricultural Marketing Platform (www.tarimsalpazarlama.com) and share the information and photos of their products while being informed about the sectoral changes and market prices at the same time. The customers find the products they look for and get in contact with the farmers on the same platform. The website has now approximately 250 thousand members, 200 of which are from other countries. The daily number of visits is over 6 thousand.

Another service of the platform is the Farmers’ Club. With their mobile phones, the farmers can sign up to the Farmers’ Club system which is free of charge. And after becoming members of this club, the farmers receive daily SMS about various topics such as daily weather forecast, warnings for flood or rain, wholesale market prices of the products or agricultural support services from the Ministry.

Around 750 thousand farmers who are members of the Farmers’ Club receive daily SMS about agriculture and animal husbandry.

Through the Agricultural Marketing Platform and the Farmers’ Club, Tulin Akin reaches more than 1 million farmers.