Light: “While carrying out our projects, we believed in our stakeholders, primarily the farmers engaged in agricultural production.”

In the IPARD 3 Promotion and Information Meeting held in Kayseri, Osman Işık, the General Director of Agricultural Reform at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, stated, “While implementing our projects, we believed in our stakeholders, especially the farmers who carry out agricultural production.”

The IPARD 3 Promotion and Information Meeting, implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry’s relevant organization, the Agricultural and Rural Development Support Institution (TKDK), took place in Kayseri. The meeting, held at a private hotel, was attended by Kayseri Governor Gökmen Çiçek, Osman Işık, Erciyes University Rector Prof. Dr. Fatih Altun, Kayseri University Rector Prof. Dr. Kurtuluş Karamustafa, AK Party Kayseri Members of Parliament Murat Cahid Cıngı and Sayın Bayar Özsoy, Kayseri Provincial Director of Agriculture and Forestry Bülent Saklav, Chamber of Commerce President Ömer Gülsoy, protocol members, and farmers. In his opening speech, Osman Işık said, “The most important duty of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry is to ensure supply in Turkey and to sell not only the produced products but also the surplus, contributing to the national income. We have started the planning process to express our predictions about whether we can do this sufficiently during this process. We managed the planning process together through discussions and brainstorming sessions. While managing, we believed that the opinions of each stakeholder regarding each of our problems were valuable and that these ideas should be included in the system. Our Minister also showed every effort to manage this process healthily with his team and from a participatory perspective. In doing this, we believed in our stakeholders in the sector, especially the farmers who carry out agricultural production. Because if they are involved in this system, we could achieve this success. By managing this process together, we wholeheartedly believed that we would reach success. While doing this, we had to take various actions. The most important of these were agricultural supports,” he expressed.

Işık pointed out that the exit of agricultural lands from agriculture is a matter that has been criticized by everyone and is closely monitored, stating, “Agricultural lands for us are a conservation area, which imposes the obligation to protect and preserve these lands as much as possible. Particularly, we have prevented the exit from our large plains. We have about 9.3 thousand hectares of large plains. We have prevented the exit from these areas. We have reserved them for our nation. We did this within the scope of security planning, except for very urgent and exceptional situations. In addition, we have imposed restrictions. Even if it is called an agricultural structure, such as a greenhouse, we stipulated that they should be built in certain places under specific conditions. Because we said, ‘We have feeding regions in terms of livestock. We have milk regions. We have poultry farming regions. Let’s direct our grant programs to these areas for investments to be made there and for these investments to be at the amounts we have determined.'”

Kayseri Governor Gökmen Çiçek stated, “As you all know, Kayseri is a city of industry, trade, and tourism. It has been a city in the middle of Anatolia that has been writing success stories for a long time, filled with entrepreneurs and fighters. This city is not only an industrial, tourism, and trade city, but also an agricultural and livestock city. And it is not just any agricultural and livestock city; it is an important agricultural and livestock city. Our city is one of the top 5 provinces in Turkey in terms of cultivated areas. Being among the top 5 in terms of cultivated and planted areas is very important. Our city ranks among the top 10 cities in Turkey producing 18 agricultural products. We are talking about a city that produces 1 million small ruminants, 419 thousand large ruminants, and 3.6 million poultry, placing it among the top 5 in livestock. As you can see, this city is a pioneer in industry and also makes incredible contributions in terms of the products it produces in agriculture.” The meeting ended with a commemorative photo.