Farmers and food manufacturers are not the ennemy of the consumers. At the end every single person is the consumer somehow of someone else. Even if you are farmer you cannot farm and grow everything you need at home or in your tiny backyard nor in your balcony. The mentality must be, to endevour for the producers to survive and even be happy of their job. The free market economy is leaving the producer alone over the wild supply/demand balance. And the big sword of Damokles in their hand , authorities are making this business frightening , frustrating and dangerous. To attract the readers social media is full of untrue entries written by incompetant persons , trolls and smear campaigns.
Producing food is not as other industries a stable and linear job. You are dependent of many outer factors. You can not control the weather conditions ,wilder weeds and plant disesases. Fertilizers are presented as the most dangerous product to the world by newspapers , TV's and social media.Very few are telling that without it how would it be possible to satiate -now reaching to eight billion world population-.The farming elapsed time is long until you get a crop to supply to the market. Even for a simple plant you needs months . Mostly you have to make estimations for the market prices at the beginning of the harvesting time which mostly will be quite different of what you would be thinking and planning at the beginning.
In Turkey farming industry was always full of plentiful incentives. In the past tea , sugar beet , hazel nuts , seedless raisins , dried figs were supported financially by various establishments which INTASCO , FISKOBIRLIK, ÇAYKUR are few names that I can give you immediately as an example. But in time such institutions became overly cowded sinecures for polticians. They were badly managed and in deficiency all the time. Their main purpose of existance forgotten.
This does not mean that we have to leave alone the farmers. There must be a solution , or we must develop many new ways to keep our farmers to continue to work. We must bear in mind the adage "it is not enough if there is not any surplus of product" Hence our aim must be to keep the market prices stable and foreseeable for the producer to prevent them to loose money and also for the consumer to adjust his budget.
A question must arise who has to take the responsability when the weather conditions are not favourable , when there is to much rain, cold , frost, floods, fires et cetera. Oil prices fluctuate daily even hourly at the stock exchange boards , while the price of our tram ticket does not change years and years. How come such stability can be established there and not in food sector?
Shortage in supply side makes the market prices double or tripple easily too which is a disaster for the consumer.
Big supermarket chains are trying to push back prices of food in order to compete with their adversaries.
Cheap transportation, adequate storage possibilites are important. New machinaries and farming techniques are also crucial to compete. Scholars at universities, state authorities , big buyer as like supermarket chains and farmers must be in continuous collaboration for new techniques and chemistry for the uninterrupted supply of the food flow while maintain prices affordable for the consumer and profitable for the growers.
04.09.2019
