IKV EU Information Centre organised a seminar entitled “Agricultural Policies within the context of the Customs Union” on 22 November 2016. The opening remarks at the panel were released by IKV Secretary-General Assoc. Prof. Çiğdem Nas, who was followed by the presentations of Senior Expert on rural development Halil Agah and EU Project Specialist Acar Şensoy.

In his presentation, Senior Expert Agah touched upon the global challenges in the agricultural sector such as climate change, food safety, water management and epidemic diseases. He also spoke about various issues related to sustainable agriculture such as renewable energy, organic farming, landless agriculture, consumer-focused agriculture, food safety and security, biotechnology and biodiversity as well as watershed management.

According to Senior Expert Agah, Turkey has succeeded in branding in recent years over 145 different products for both the domestic and international markets. Russia, Germany, Romania, Ukraine and Saudi Arabia are the five main countries to which Turkey has exported agricultural products in 2015. He emphasised that Turkey has a dynamic and large internal market and constitutes an important agricultural power. With regards to aquaculture, indicating that Turkey is the third fastest growing country in the world, Senior Expert Agah explained that there is still room for further improvement on Turkey’s part in regards to its export performance of aquaculture products to the EU. He explained that introducing a technological system that integrates legislation, marketing systems and organisation structures could increase organic farming. Furthermore, he underlined the importance of the rapidly growing biofuels market and the need to introduce renewable energy cooperatives and associations in Turkey as well as in other countries.

In his presentation, EU Project Specialist Acar Şensoy summarised the EU common agricultural policy since 1960s and explained the evolution of the policy in parallel to internal and external conditions. In this respect, he stated that boosting agricultural productivity generated a surplus of supply and the need for reforms in the following years. The main reasons for the establishment of the common agricultural policy were to provide sufficient agricultural product, improve food safety, modernise the farms, protect the environment and improve the animal welfare. He explained that the main policy change to common agricultural policy has been to minimise the direct support to farmers and to replace it by a new system of market mechanism where the support is directed to the farmers according to market conditions. Şensoy revealed detailed information about the three main points of this new system which are direct payments, market regulations and rural development programmes.

Lastly, Şensoy also gave information about EU support for the rural development aiming to enhance innovation and competitiveness, to encourage sustainable forest management and develop ecosystems for the agriculture and forest.