Innovation, Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability in Turkey is part of the OECD Food and Agricultural Reviews series. This review was prepared in close cooperation with Turkish Government. It examines the policy conditions for businesses in Turkey to undertake innovation for the food and agriculture sector to become more productive and environmentally sustainable. The report begins with an overview of the food and agriculture sector and outlines its development challenges and opportunities (Chapter 2). A wide range of policies which influence incentives for innovation are then examined: economic stability and a favourable and predictable environment for investment (Chapter 3); capacities and public services enabling business development (Chapter 4); agricultural policy (Chapter 5), and the operation of the agricultural innovation system (Chapter 6). Chapter 1 summarises these findings and provides policy recommendations.

The Turkish agro-food sector has the potential to significantly contribute to the country’s overall economic development, but its ability to do so will depend largely on productivity growth. To achieve this, a fundamental challenge will be to overcome the buffer role traditionally played by agriculture; labour resources must be re-allocated to more efficient uses within and outside this sector. In essence, agricultural productivity growth in Turkey will depend on the extent to which the country’s overall economic and human development enables rural people to generate income outside low-technology agriculture.

This chapter summarises the findings of the review and presents policy recommendations to foster productivity and sustainability in the food and agriculture sector. Turkish policies are examined using a framework developed by the OECD to analyse the extent to which a country’s policies support innovation, structural change, and sustainable use of natural resources in the food and agriculture sector.

This chapter outlines the overall economic, social and environmental context in which the food and agriculture sector in Turkey operates, and the natural resource base upon which it relies. It begins with a discussion of the challenges and opportunities for agriculture and the food complex. It then provides the general natural and economic characteristics; shows the importance of the agricultural sector in the economy; outlines the main structural characteristics of agriculture and the food sector; and analyses the main trends in agricultural productivity and sustainability.

This chapter provides an overview of the overall performance of the Turkish economy and outlines the macroeconomic developments and challenges ahead. It then looks at regulations that govern entrepreneurship and access to natural resources, and the extent to which they affect the adoption of innovative practices. This chapter also presents policies related to trade, investment, finance and taxation, and discusses their impact on the capacity of firms to invest and take advantage of market opportunities.

This chapter outlines the role of infrastructure capacity, labour mobility, skills, and education in facilitating innovation in agriculture and food sectors. It describes the policies to improve rural infrastructure and outlines the main regional programmes. It then analyses how labour and education policies respond to demands for skills, and reports on trends in education expenditure and on the performance of the educational system. Finally, an overview is given on the level of education of those working in agriculture and on enrolment in agricultural programmes, notably by outlining the gap between supply and demand of skills.

This chapter provides an overview of domestic and trade agricultural policy measures that are specific to the agricultural sector. These differ from the general policies reviewed in previous chapters which concern agriculture and other sectors as parts of the overall economy. This chapter presents the objectives of Turkey’s agricultural policy; it examines domestic price policies and payments based on various parameters of agricultural production, as well as based on environmental criteria. Trade policy measures associated with domestic agricultural policies are then examined, followed by an overview of land consolidation and rural development programmes. Finally, the extent to which Turkey’s agricultural policy is oriented to the support of long-term agricultural productivity is evaluated based on OECD support indicators.

This chapter examines how the Turkish agricultural innovation system functions. It looks at the role of the different actors, the governance mechanisms to define priorities and evaluate performance, trends in agricultural R&D expenditure and sources of funding, and how intellectual property protection fosters knowledge markets. It also outlines the institutional arrangements to facilitate knowledge transfer and outlines the efforts undertaken to strengthen international R&D co-operation. Finally, this chapter provides evidence on the performance of the agricultural innovation system, including R&D outputs.