Turkey: Domestic wheat production to top 21 mln tons this year

Agriculture and Rural Affairs Minister Mehmet Mehdi Eker has said Turkey’s domestic wheat production is likely to be recorded at 21 million tons, the Anatolia news agency reported on Thursday.

The annual wheat production figure the minister announced according to the report is 2 million tons more than the amount of wheat consumed in Turkey in a year, thus alleviating the need to import wheat from abroad in 2011. This expectation was previously expressed by Agriculturalists Association of Turkey (TZD) President İbrahim Yetkin, who said mid-April that Turkey will produce 20-21 million tons of wheat this year, which is approximately a 10 percent increase compared to last year’s 19.6 million tons. Annual wheat consumption in Turkey is about 19 million tons.

Deadly forest fires last year destroyed a quarter of the grain crop in Russia, which is the world’s third largest grain producing nation, leading the country to ban all wheat exports from mid-August 2010. The news alarmed international commodity markets and pushed wheat futures to two-year highs. Although this was unfortunate for other wheat importers, it had little impact on the Turkish market last year; however, the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government still granted the state-owned Soil Products Office (TMO) the right to customs-free imports in December of last year for 1 million tons of wheat to contain the risk of possible price increases in the sector. It also later suspended the 130 percent tariff on wheat and oat imports until May 1 of this year for the private sector.

(Source: http://www.todayszaman.com/news-242946-domestic-wheat-production-to-top-21-mln-tons-this-year.html)