"Water or Wisdom? Tackling Agriculture Sustainability in Türkiye"

Asst. Prof. Dr. Deniz Istipliler / Ege University, Department of Field Crops, Izmir/Türkiye Author

05/05/2025 Added

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Türkiye, the 12th largest plant producer in the world, faces significant agricultural sustainability challenges: natural resource scarcity, particularly water, and technical shortcomings. This presentation explores whether drought and water shortages are the main culprits or if gaps in knowledge, technology, and management practices lie at the root of the problem.

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[00:00:00.300]The following presentation is part of the Agronomy and Horticulture Seminar Series at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
[00:00:07.740]All right, folks, let's get started. Thank you for joining us here today for the Ag and Hort Seminar Series.
[00:00:13.740]It's my real joy today to be introducing Professor Deniz Istipliler.
[00:00:18.900]I'm sorry, I looked at that horribly.
[00:00:21.100]Who currently serves as the Vice Chair of the Department of Field Crops Research at Ag A University.
[00:00:26.400]I've known Deniz for a number of years.
[00:00:28.060]He actually reached out about coming to visit my lab right before the pandemic, if I'm remembering the timeline right.
[00:00:34.100]Just right after.
[00:00:35.280]Right after.
[00:00:35.840]It took a little while, but we got him out here.
[00:00:38.260]Now, Professor Istempelier's research started out with a background working actually with sweet corn genetics.
[00:00:48.940]He's moved into a number of fields, including abiotic stress tolerance in both corn and wheat.
[00:00:54.380]And more recently, cellulose.
[00:00:56.380]He's made a substantial effort into using high-threat phenotyping to understand both genetics and stress biology.
[00:01:03.360]He now leads a major EU project focused on building out greater phenotyping capacity in Turkey and Cyprus.
[00:01:12.180]I think, again, focused around these crops and abiotic stress.
[00:01:16.240]And I'm really excited to hear what he can tell us about today.
[00:01:19.080]So with that, Deniz, take it away.
[00:01:21.260]Thank you very much, James.
[00:01:29.180]Hi, everyone.
[00:01:29.920]My name is Deniz Istipliler.
[00:01:32.440]I am working at Ege University, Field Crops Department in Izmir, Turkey.
[00:01:38.660]And it's a great honor for me to be here to present my presentation today in an agronomy and horticulture seminar series at UNL.
[00:01:49.320]And some of them I know.
[00:01:50.800]Some of them already know me.
[00:01:53.440]As Professor Schnabel mentioned, I was here in between '22 and '23 as a visiting scholar in the Schnabel Lab.
[00:02:03.480]I was so lucky to work with Professor Schnabel and his amazing team.
[00:02:09.240]And today I hope you will enjoy my presentation today.
[00:02:15.960]My talk will be briefly about determining the sustainable
[00:02:20.780]water management strategies in my country.
[00:02:23.280]I will give a couple of cases to you.
[00:02:27.800]Let me talk about the roadmap of my presentation.
[00:02:30.700]We will start with the agricultural overview of my country and current wet water situation
[00:02:37.800]in my country, water scarcity.
[00:02:40.480]And to illustrate this better and clearly, I will give you two case studies from my country.
[00:02:50.760]Which will be very opposite ones.
[00:02:54.260]And in the third part, I will talk about knowledge and technology gaps and how to bridge those
[00:03:01.580]gaps in my country and what solutions can be used to solve these problems.
[00:03:09.380]And at the end, if we have time, we can make some discussions about the topics that I present.
[00:03:16.000]Okay.
[00:03:17.000]Where am I coming from?
[00:03:20.740]I'm approximately 6,300 miles away from here.
[00:03:27.260]And it took me 35 hours flight, including layovers.
[00:03:33.640]And okay, Turkey is, as you can see, located in between Asia and Europe.
[00:03:39.200]It's kind of a natural bridge in between two continents.
[00:03:43.280]And as you can see, we are sitting in the middle of
[00:03:50.720]the action.
[00:03:52.180]And on the north, all Ukraine and Russia is fighting each other.
[00:03:55.540]And on the south side, there is Syria, Iran, and Iraq.
[00:04:00.860]And also, if you go more far south, you will see Israel, Palestine.
[00:04:07.900]And so many things are going on in my geography.
[00:04:13.000]And yeah, so many actions.
[00:04:18.020]But let's talk about agriculture, in my opinion.
[00:04:20.700]In my country, we have a very diverse climate and very diverse farming practices.
[00:04:25.940]If you go west part of my country, you can see very beautiful sunflower fields, olive
[00:04:33.540]fields.
[00:04:34.540]And at the western part, you can see a lot of cotton.
[00:04:38.140]And maybe you have heard the Asian cotton.
[00:04:40.440]It's very famous cotton in the world.
[00:04:44.420]It is being produced in Asian region of my country.
[00:04:47.920]And if you move into the central Anatolia--
[00:04:50.680]Anatolia-- you will start to see some grains--
[00:04:56.080]corn, barley, wheat, and so on.
[00:04:59.120]And if you move further to east, you
[00:05:01.240]will start to see pulses and maize again, and corn,
[00:05:06.400]and tomatoes.
[00:05:07.720]And most eastern part, you can find middle crops
[00:05:12.100]or pasture crops, like alfalfa, like clover,
[00:05:15.440]like sorghum in some fields.
[00:05:18.100]And we are very famous with our--
[00:05:20.660]our hazelnuts.
[00:05:21.620]Maybe you know this.
[00:05:24.460]And as climate, the farming practices
[00:05:30.100]is also showing very diverse products.
[00:05:36.960]So when we look at the climate, we
[00:05:40.240]have a classic Mediterranean climate,
[00:05:43.500]in which the winters are warm and rainy,
[00:05:46.800]and the summers are very dry and hot.
[00:05:50.640]The average rainfall of my country is about 571 millimeters.
[00:05:54.960]I don't know, does millimeters mean something to you?
[00:05:59.480]We can convert it to 22.4 inches annually.
[00:06:04.180]It's very less.
[00:06:06.400]And total area Turkey is covering is 78 million hectares.
[00:06:13.720]So this is a very brief overview.
[00:06:20.620]Let me give you a couple of numbers.
[00:06:24.320]We are an agricultural country, and agriculture is the pillar of our economy.
[00:06:31.260]So the total arable land in my country is 24 million hectares, which coincides the 30%
[00:06:42.500]of total area country covering.
[00:06:46.820]Almost 25 of the workforce is working in agricultural sector.
[00:06:50.600]And with 68 billion US dollar agricultural product amount, and it is forming 6 to 7%
[00:07:06.280]of gross domestic production, Turkey stands at the 10th place of world's agriculture.
[00:07:15.080]And our agri-food exports is about 17 billion.
[00:07:20.580]And our rock stars in my country are hazelnuts and apricots.
[00:07:29.940]We are in the first place for these two.
[00:07:34.380]I know if -- do we have anyone that doesn't like Nutella or something?
[00:07:40.420]Yeah, everyone likes.
[00:07:41.980]And we are producing this 64% of all world's hazelnuts, but Italians are making them.
[00:07:50.560]Nutella. And on the other hand, we are producing 22% of total
[00:07:59.980]apricots in the world, which coincides to 800,000 tons
[00:08:07.060]annually. But I'm not a horticulture guy. I am a crop
[00:08:12.160]guy. So I will talk about grains, I will talk about
[00:08:17.860]shales, I will talk about, my stories will be about weeds and
[00:08:21.580]maize and maybe cotton today. Let's have a look at the
[00:08:28.600]agricultural land use in Turkey. As you can see, there are too
[00:08:32.740]many numbers. As you can see on the right hand side, the field
[00:08:36.740]crops are covering almost 70% of all our arable
[00:08:47.740]land.
[00:08:47.740]And within these field crops, cereals are very important. And
[00:08:55.600]within these cereals on your left hand side, you can see
[00:09:00.260]wheat is the major product, and followed by barley and corn.
[00:09:07.540]And we are producing almost 22 million tons of wheat annually,
[00:09:14.980]9 million tons of barley.
[00:09:17.620]And 9 million tons of maize.
[00:09:20.380]We are standing at the ninth place in terms of wheat
[00:09:27.180]producing. Wheat is so important for us.
[00:09:29.540]It's a strategic plant, because we love wheat. Do you know how
[00:09:35.860]much bread, do you know how much bread, do you know how much
[00:09:40.180]bread a regular Turkish person consume annually? It's very huge
[00:09:47.320]number.
[00:09:47.500]We love bread. We are at the first place so far, and almost
[00:10:01.360]200 kg, like, maybe 100 pounds or maybe a little. Okay, sorry.
[00:10:10.600]So yeah, 400 pounds almost. Do you know or any guess about
[00:10:16.140]what's the number for you?
[00:10:17.380]United States? Almost 10 times less. 17. 17 kg. Yeah. And yeah,
[00:10:32.300]given this importance of agriculture for my country, we
[00:10:36.820]must ask to ourselves, how do we sustain
[00:10:40.240]this agricultural bounty for the future generations? We are
[00:10:47.260]we will slightly move towards on our main subject. Now, the
[00:10:52.600]water situation in Turkey in my country, we are not a water
[00:10:57.280]rich country.
[00:10:58.340]There is a common threshold for the minimum water comfortable
[00:11:06.860]status, which is 1700 tonnes per capita annually. We are under
[00:11:15.400]that level right now.
[00:11:17.140]And the things are getting worse. The projections say, by
[00:11:23.200]the mid of the century, we will end up with 1000 tonnes fresh
[00:11:33.260]water per capita annually in our country.
[00:11:36.340]So the debt number is according to this these numbers are from
[00:11:42.700]my Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. And
[00:11:47.020]well, according to World Resource Institute, I think the
[00:11:52.120]number for us is right now, about 8400 tonnes. It's almost
[00:12:00.220]eight times more. Of course, you have a very big lands and
[00:12:04.800]yeah, compared to us. So what is so critical? So how are we
[00:12:13.300]using? How are we consuming this water? And you can
[00:12:16.900]see agriculture dominates as everywhere. Turkey in Turkey,
[00:12:21.560]this situation is the same. We the agriculture uses 75% of
[00:12:27.380]total amount of fresh water. And any water scarcity that we are
[00:12:35.440]experiencing is directly affecting the agricultural
[00:12:40.480]sector, first and foremost. And climate models are predicting
[00:12:46.780]the worst scenarios and worst news. This is very recent plot
[00:12:54.020]that I took from our meteorological station. And it
[00:13:02.800]shows the drought indices by the regions.
[00:13:07.960]The regions exposed to different levels of drought. In the last
[00:13:16.660]12 months, based on the deviation of the total precipitation from
[00:13:21.020]long term averages. And in you can see in 2024, we experienced a
[00:13:28.480]severe drought conditions in most regions of Turkey, except
[00:13:35.020]the northern northern sites.
[00:13:38.620]And but we don't have any data for 2024. It's not ready yet. So
[00:13:46.120]we cannot
[00:13:46.540]listen. Currently, we don't have any data calculated to see the
[00:13:53.620]effect of this drought in the for example, wheat production.
[00:13:57.300]But in 2021, we had another drought event resulted in almost
[00:14:06.260]15% production loss in wheat and almost 30% production loss in
[00:14:12.980]barley. But what about maize?
[00:14:16.420]It was a big drought in 2021. What's this?
[00:14:22.240]Do you have any idea? Okay. In here, Nebraska, you are growing
[00:14:32.060]Yes, what? Exactly irrigation. We are irrigating maize. Not
[00:14:40.100]like you. It's for us, it's impossible
[00:14:46.300]to grow maize without irrigation because as I said before, our
[00:14:49.600]summer seasons are really dry. So this drought event didn't
[00:14:54.460]affect maize production at all. While we are on the irrigation
[00:15:01.620]subjects, let me talk about a couple of numbers about
[00:15:04.560]irrigation in my country. We have almost 8.5 million hectares
[00:15:11.440]of irrigable lands, which coincides with 30% of total
[00:15:16.180]arable land in Turkey. And the current reality is over 65% of
[00:15:23.800]those irrigable lands are being irrigated with the old irrigation
[00:15:32.380]systems like fluid irrigation, and so on. As I said, fluid
[00:15:37.720]irrigation is the main method. And there's a huge opportunity to save the
[00:15:46.060]water through the modernization. So let me ask my main question. So is the water
[00:15:58.840]the issue for sustainability? It's certainly a huge one. We all agree on
[00:16:05.260]this. Without enough water you don't have anything, okay? But here is the thing.
[00:16:09.820]Sometimes it's not just about absolute water, but it's
[00:16:15.940]can be about how we wisely use it. How wisely we use it. It can be. For example,
[00:16:23.500]there are places in Turkey where even limited water is managed brilliantly and
[00:16:28.120]produces good yields. On the other hand, there are other places where relatively
[00:16:32.620]abundant water has been mismanaged and leading to other problems. In other
[00:16:39.580]words, sometimes it's wisdom that makes or breaks the sustainability, rather than
[00:16:45.820]the natural does, maybe. And to illustrate this opinion, I will show you
[00:16:55.480]two cases from my country. One is at the central Anatolia, called the city of Konya,
[00:17:06.640]Konya Basin, in which you cannot find too much water in the ground.
[00:17:15.700]In the soil. And the other case, the opposite. It will be at the south-eastern Anatolia,
[00:17:24.320]and there will be so much water there, and we will see which one is good and which one
[00:17:30.560]was managed better. And these two cases will be the two sides of a coin.
[00:17:39.360]Okay, case one. Central Anatolia case.
[00:17:45.580]We have a very nice tea called Konya, you can see it here.
[00:17:50.280]It sits in the heart of central Anatolia with broad plains, cover almost 11% of total arable
[00:17:58.140]lands in the country. It's called "greenery of the country" because most of the grain,
[00:18:06.740]for example, 30% of the grain is produced by Konya, and 10% of the wheat is produced
[00:18:15.460]by Konya. That's why it's called "greenery". But it has a very limited rainfall, only
[00:18:23.380]13.5 inches. It's really less amount of rainfall.
[00:18:29.680]So traditionally, farmers here grew cereals like wheat and barley, in which you can grow
[00:18:39.240]them in the winter season, in the winter rainy season, and harvest them just before, just
[00:18:45.340]at the beginning of the summer, and so the plants can survive and produce some grain
[00:18:55.340]for you.
[00:19:02.100]That was a historical practice of the farmers until the beginnings of the 2000s. And in
[00:19:15.220]2000, farmers discovered a new method, a new technology. Actually, it was not new, but
[00:19:24.860]our farmers discovered it, to making wells. Drill the ground and take the water outside,
[00:19:33.640]and there was plenty of water at that time, and they started to use it for their summer
[00:19:38.460]crops. And that was a great action, a great shift from wheat
[00:19:45.100]to corn. Everyone was, everyone, everyone were earning more, producing more, everyone
[00:19:54.260]was happy. And with that shift, Konya sits to the first place in corn production in Turkey.
[00:20:06.300]But there was a reality, reality. I mean, you need at least 600, 700 millimeters of
[00:20:14.980]corn to grow corn. But you have only 305. What would you do? You need to, okay, drill
[00:20:23.260]the ground and take the soil out, take the water out. Okay.
[00:20:28.880]To illustrate this more clearly, I want to show you comparison between the Lincoln, Nebraska,
[00:20:36.660]and Konya in terms of precipitation, annual precipitation. Tell me, if you were, if you
[00:20:44.860]were a corn grower, and I already know you are, which city would you choose to grow corn?
[00:20:55.920]Look at this beautiful decrease on the summer time in which corn demands most of its water.
[00:21:05.680]And does it make sense? Yeah, it does not make sense. But corn was a cash crop. It is
[00:21:14.740]giving too much. It was making farmers happy. So farmers didn't give up drilling and they
[00:21:26.680]continued to drill more. And do you know what happens if you play with nature unfairly?
[00:21:38.860]Yeah, this is what happens if you don't play with nature unfairly.
[00:21:44.620]Yeah, when you go to your field in one morning, which you love too much, and your beautiful
[00:21:54.400]maize plants have been sunken maybe 15 metres into the ground. Or maybe this kind of view.
[00:22:07.380]Yeah. Or maybe this. Yeah, and like this. And too
[00:22:14.500]many of them. What are these? Those are called sinkholes. And nearly perfect round-shaped
[00:22:25.000]holes just suddenly showed up and swallowed the earth. And it can be as small as two,
[00:22:34.740]three metres in diameter. It can reach up to 40 metres in diameter. And it can go as
[00:22:44.380]30, 35 metres. And it's, yeah. Because the water underground has been pumped out faster
[00:22:54.620]than it can regenerate itself. And some empty caveats formed, and then those are eventually
[00:23:04.500]collapsed. So, pretty much. At the latest news by the
[00:23:14.260]by 2024, we have three thousand of them in Konya. It's not, it's a really big one. And
[00:23:29.200]I bet you can see at which year our farmers discovered to drill the ground. Yeah.
[00:23:44.140]At the beginning of 2000s, we discovered and then we ended up with this one.
[00:23:49.480]Almost three thousand of them we have. Root cause is water
[00:24:00.860]depletion of groundwater. And it's a really growing problem. It's because of
[00:24:06.940]the unsustainable water mathematics, you know. We have a water budget. And
[00:24:14.020]we are consuming much more than we are getting from sky. And those underground
[00:24:22.180]reservoirs are built in, formed in maybe hundreds of years. And we used, we are
[00:24:29.140]using them in decades. And yeah, and it is accelerating trends. So it's a problem
[00:24:38.500]is getting bigger. So what we can do? Okay, corn is a high profit cash crop.
[00:24:43.900]But it has a high water demand. Barley and wheat, okay. The natural crops of that
[00:24:52.440]region, but lower profit. I think maybe we can suggest another solution, like
[00:25:01.140]maybe a more appropriate crop selection, like maybe millet or sorghum rather
[00:25:07.500]than corn can be produced there. And those, in those type of cases, it's
[00:25:13.780]always very useful for me to follow good scientists around the world, what are
[00:25:19.280]they doing and what in their research or follow-up. For example, here Professor
[00:25:26.060]Schnabel is explaining that frozen millet can produce much more amount of
[00:25:31.720]grain with the same amount of water. Maybe it can or it should be introduced
[00:25:39.780]into the region in a near future.
[00:25:43.660]Okay, this is a wrap-up, the case one. Water scarcity is a problem. Crop planning,
[00:25:54.120]matching and appropriate crops to the climate is necessary. And irrigation
[00:25:58.940]efficiency, at least if you want to irrigate the field, at least use the
[00:26:02.860]better method rather than fluid irrigation, you know. And maybe some
[00:26:07.360]regulations are needed to get new wells around the area.
[00:26:13.540]Okay, this brings us to case two. It's a completely opposite one. This is the
[00:26:22.480]case of too much of a good thing. I will take you to the south-east part of
[00:26:31.920]the country. I will talk about a big irrigation project called south-east
[00:26:37.720]Anatolia project, shortly GAP project.
[00:26:43.420]It covers nine cities at the south-eastern part of Turkey.
[00:26:52.240]Almost 40 years ago the massive regional development projects
[00:26:59.040]centered on harnessing two big rivers on that region called Euclid and Tigris rivers
[00:27:08.960]for irrigation and hydroelectric power.
[00:27:12.280]And its goal, the project's goals, were ambitious.
[00:27:16.980]Boost the crop production, improve the incomes, and water the desert.
[00:27:28.680]At the end of the project, 1.8 million hectares of arid land aimed to be irrigated.
[00:27:38.780]And it started in 1980, and $32 billion spent.
[00:27:47.380]And it was projected 22 dams on these two big rivers, and it was aimed to produce 30
[00:27:58.340]percent of total energy of the country.
[00:28:02.000]Yeah, let's go to the Hiram Plain, one of the flagship of the GAP project.
[00:28:14.760]It was a very case and example plain of GAP project.
[00:28:19.320]It was a dry plain before the GAP, with almost 300 millimeters rainfall, like Konya
[00:28:28.000]example before, and that traditionally could support only rain-fed cereals like barley
[00:28:35.820]and wheat.
[00:28:36.480]With GAP, government built watering channels through the project areas, and farmers suddenly
[00:28:47.040]had water for their summer crops.
[00:28:52.000]Again, what did they do?
[00:28:57.660]They shifted their crop selection or choices rapidly from wheat to cash crops like maize,
[00:29:07.320]cotton, lots of cotton, and that dramatic change also can be observed from sky with
[00:29:15.560]the NASA satellites imagery.
[00:29:19.040]You can see on the left-hand side, they picked this picture from 1993, and the same area
[00:29:24.740]at 2002.
[00:29:27.320]It's a really huge, dramatic change.
[00:29:31.940]The previously desert land is now a productable area.
[00:29:40.160]And this region just sat on the first place in cotton production in a couple of years.
[00:29:48.860]So everyone was going well, the rural income arose, the lands are highly productive, everything
[00:29:56.980]was going very well.
[00:30:01.080]However, and I bet you knew however was coming, the farmers didn't know how to use that water.
[00:30:11.120]They didn't have enough practice for water management and best irrigation practices.
[00:30:22.500]So they applied over-irrigation.
[00:30:26.640]With the mentality of more water is more yield.
[00:30:33.360]And groundwater level arose without a proper drainage.
[00:30:40.880]And salination problem has begun.
[00:30:44.900]And we ended up a yield decline, very big yield decline in the region.
[00:30:51.240]Because of this salinity problem.
[00:30:56.300]And it can be seen from the data as well.
[00:31:00.760]And in early 2000s, they sounded the alarm.
[00:31:05.640]About 15% of Haram Plain become salt affected.
[00:31:09.900]And 30% of the land was being projected under the risk.
[00:31:15.900]So what happened?
[00:31:21.360]What were the causes for this?
[00:31:24.280]Of course, the poor drainage.
[00:31:25.960]Monocropping, as well.
[00:31:32.800]A farmer get used to earn more, and didn't change his or her
[00:31:44.540]choice anymore, and started to crop same thing each year.
[00:31:52.720]And this makes salinization problem.
[00:31:55.620]And of course, it was a very hot and arid area,
[00:32:00.820]with a very huge amount of evaporation,
[00:32:04.940]which also contribute a problem.
[00:32:08.220]And of course, a knowledge gap.
[00:32:09.900]Farmers lacked training and irrigation management
[00:32:13.400]practices.
[00:32:14.120]What can be the solutions?
[00:32:19.140]Of course, proper drainage system can be applied.
[00:32:23.360]Smart irrigation systems needs to be
[00:32:25.280]established.
[00:32:28.960]And crop rotation, on the other hand, is very important.
[00:32:33.400]And of course, the farmer education is needed.
[00:32:37.240]So gap project assessment, is that project successful?
[00:32:44.820]Yes, in most of the ways.
[00:32:50.020]But in a couple of ways, in a couple of aspects,
[00:32:54.160]it has some challenges.
[00:32:54.940]As I mentioned to you.
[00:33:01.380]And it was an irrigation project.
[00:33:08.700]But you know, it's not an only irrigation project.
[00:33:12.140]It also contributes to regional development,
[00:33:14.640]such as financial, social, economic development
[00:33:17.560]of the region.
[00:33:18.720]I told you two different scenarios.
[00:33:24.600]In Konya, there was a water scarcity
[00:33:28.080]needing a wisdom in conservation.
[00:33:32.520]On the other hand, in Gap case, we had too much water.
[00:33:38.560]And in that case also, we need wisdom in water management.
[00:33:44.280]So as a common thread, a common problem,
[00:33:48.600]knowledge and, so to speak, wisdom
[00:33:51.400]determines the sustainable outcomes.
[00:33:54.260]OK.
[00:33:59.980]I don't want to talk about this too much anymore.
[00:34:02.240]But in Konya Basin, farmers didn't give up drilling.
[00:34:08.720]In Harlem Plain, farmers didn't give up cropping cotton.
[00:34:12.560]And in both cases, authorities urged farmers not do this,
[00:34:19.060]not do that.
[00:34:19.920]But no one listened, and we ended up
[00:34:23.920]with this crisis.
[00:34:28.200]So key insight from these two stories
[00:34:31.900]is that simply adding or removing water does not
[00:34:36.860]guarantee the sustainability.
[00:34:40.540]We need to know how to manage the proper amount of water.
[00:34:46.680]OK, so as I said, we need to know.
[00:34:49.600]That brings us to the part three, the last part.
[00:34:52.780]It will not--
[00:34:53.580]it will not be so long.
[00:34:56.080]No worries.
[00:34:57.140]I am going to end to my presentation.
[00:35:03.840]In the last part, I will talk about knowledge, technology,
[00:35:06.340]and management gaps.
[00:35:07.660]I already talked about knowledge and management gaps
[00:35:11.940]and their importance.
[00:35:13.840]So in that part, I will move with the agritech level
[00:35:19.080]of Turkey and its challenges.
[00:35:23.240]We all know and are aware about the precision agriculture
[00:35:25.800]techniques that allow the farmers to make better decisions
[00:35:29.620]when it comes to irrigation.
[00:35:31.940]And I won't dive into the details for this one,
[00:35:34.620]but I want to give a couple of numbers and statistics
[00:35:37.780]for Turkey's technology adaptation.
[00:35:41.660]Almost half of our farmers are using
[00:35:49.760]e-governmental services to get some
[00:35:52.900]meteorological predictions and so on.
[00:35:56.280]42% of our farmers are using meteorological information data
[00:36:01.280]to plan their agricultural actions.
[00:36:05.840]And 29% of them are using land registry
[00:36:11.420]and cadastral parcel inquiry data from the web.
[00:36:16.420]And 17% of them are using IRTEC information stem,
[00:36:22.560]it's about livestock management.
[00:36:25.620]And only 7% of them are using smartphone apps
[00:36:30.400]for plant protection actions.
[00:36:32.900]It's a really low portion of the farmers.
[00:36:40.940]So why it is like that?
[00:36:46.520]There are some barriers to technology adaptation in Turkey.
[00:36:51.080]So for example,
[00:36:52.220]farm structure.
[00:36:53.620]We have very low size farms in our country.
[00:36:58.620]Let's say five to six hectares on average.
[00:37:01.760]It's really, really small size of farms.
[00:37:06.300]For example, if you have very small size farm,
[00:37:09.540]you don't think about to buy,
[00:37:12.080]for example, $50,000 cost,
[00:37:16.320]meteorological hop into your field.
[00:37:21.880]So economic factors are other limited factors for farmers.
[00:37:26.880]The human factors, our farmers like to do
[00:37:32.760]what their fathers did.
[00:37:35.420]So they are very traditional.
[00:37:37.900]So they don't want risk, they don't allow risk.
[00:37:42.900]So that brings a slow adaptation.
[00:37:47.180]And age demographics, the farmer age in my country,
[00:37:51.760]is getting higher and higher year by year.
[00:37:54.920]It's a very bad thing.
[00:37:56.980]Now it's 50 on average.
[00:37:58.800]But although we have those barriers,
[00:38:03.460]we need to do some things to bridge this knowledge gap
[00:38:08.460]in between the technology users and new adopters.
[00:38:14.060]So we are doing some projects
[00:38:19.580]and some beautiful nice stuff.
[00:38:21.760]So bridging this gap in my country.
[00:38:25.620]Last year we have funded by European Union
[00:38:31.200]about the high throughput plant phenotyping project.
[00:38:35.780]And this project aimed to increase the scientific excellence
[00:38:43.480]and knowledge capacities of my country,
[00:38:48.480]in my country.
[00:38:51.080]And, you know,
[00:38:51.760]in my university.
[00:38:53.400]And it's aimed also at technology transfer
[00:38:56.640]in between five partners that we have
[00:39:00.000]from La Hennigin, from Julie, and from Italy.
[00:39:04.840]And we are conducting too many activities, events,
[00:39:09.840]within this project.
[00:39:13.580]We are making field days.
[00:39:16.060]We are organizing workshops, telling the people
[00:39:19.280]what is precision agriculture,
[00:39:21.080]what is high-throughput penetrating.
[00:39:22.980]On the other hand, we are going to other countries,
[00:39:26.760]top tier researchers, to learn some new things
[00:39:29.920]for knowledge transfer purposes.
[00:39:33.760]So this is going really nice, by far.
[00:39:38.760]And let's stop by at the first question
[00:39:45.640]of this presentation, or last time, water and wisdom.
[00:39:50.400]Wisdom, it needs a perfect balance.
[00:39:54.340]We can think water as the body of the human
[00:39:57.400]and wisdom is the mind of the human.
[00:40:00.840]They need to be, they need to be,
[00:40:03.620]they need to work together, harmoniously,
[00:40:06.820]to get a sustainable and manageable agriculture
[00:40:11.620]in my country and in the world as well, I think.
[00:40:16.100]Okay, with this,
[00:40:19.720]this brings me to the end of my presentation.
[00:40:23.000]Thank you for your time.
[00:40:24.440]Thanks to University of Nebraska-Lincoln,
[00:40:27.160]Department of Agronomy and Horticulture
[00:40:29.300]for giving me this opportunity.
[00:40:31.340]And lastly, big thanks to Dr. Schnabel
[00:40:34.020]and whole Schnabel Lab for excellent hospitality
[00:40:37.260]during my visit here in Lincoln.
[00:40:39.620]And would be nice to have your questions and discussions.
[00:40:44.620]- Questions?
[00:40:45.460]Questions for Deniz while you're thinking.
[00:41:02.680]So Deniz, I actually had one I was wondering about.
[00:41:04.980]You mentioned the potential
[00:41:05.900]to use water much more efficiently.
[00:41:08.300]Are you seeing there's an observation that is,
[00:41:10.980]we've seen in parts of the Western U.S.
[00:41:12.600]that actually if you increase the efficiency
[00:41:14.100]of water use,
[00:41:14.600]you see increased use of water
[00:41:16.600]because now the same number of gallons of water,
[00:41:19.680]you can irrigate more crops,
[00:41:20.660]you can make more money.
[00:41:21.780]And so people actually invest
[00:41:23.000]in bringing more land into production
[00:41:25.040]with like drip irrigation or something
[00:41:26.500]than if you're using less efficient systems.
[00:41:29.900]- Okay, good question.
[00:41:31.700]You are asking that if I find a way
[00:41:39.300]to use water more efficiently,
[00:41:41.880]it makes me use more water than before.
[00:41:44.580]Okay, it depends on your needs, I think.
[00:41:47.740]If your society, if your people,
[00:41:52.960]if your industry needs that product
[00:41:57.000]that you produce eventually,
[00:41:59.460]you need to improve your production.
[00:42:03.860]But if you have a saturated industry for that crop,
[00:42:08.860]it doesn't mean too much to plant it more than it needs.
[00:42:14.560]I don't know if it was a satisfied answer.
[00:42:19.560]Yeah. Thank you.
[00:42:22.400]- Hi, Denis. Very nice talk.
[00:42:29.860]- Hi, Nikki.
[00:42:30.960]- So I'm thinking about like scientist or researcher,
[00:42:35.500]how they're proposing alternate crops.
[00:42:39.200]And the main reason farmers were inclined towards maize
[00:42:42.880]is because it produces more
[00:42:44.540]gas at the end, right?
[00:42:45.660]And they do care about the profit and everything.
[00:42:48.220]So how is the market for those alternate crops in Turkey
[00:42:52.460]and how much they're encouraged, I guess?
[00:42:55.180]- Yeah, it's a very, very important and good question.
[00:42:58.940]Thank you very much for asking.
[00:43:00.540]Okay, it's a really huge challenge
[00:43:04.540]to build the industry for a new crop.
[00:43:08.060]Will the market, will the demand,
[00:43:09.820]will the farmer knowledge and so on.
[00:43:14.520]Huge process needs to be done.
[00:43:18.360]But I suggest you cannot know if you don't start.
[00:43:25.720]I mean, some people around my country
[00:43:30.360]has already started to grow proso.
[00:43:32.520]And maybe within the next years,
[00:43:36.760]some other people will see the field next to him.
[00:43:44.500]He will see the farmer, for example,
[00:43:48.420]planting proso is not suffering from drought.
[00:43:51.140]And next year, he will decide to choose that plant.
[00:43:55.380]And slowly, this increase, maybe it will take decades.
[00:44:01.700]But eventually, we can achieve the success.
[00:44:09.780]Thank you.
[00:44:14.480]You talked about drainage.
[00:44:17.760]And my question is, in other countries like Australia that they have something
[00:44:23.440]maybe similar to this, they found that going in and installing drainage ditches
[00:44:28.720]and pumping that water, they got rid of it, putting it in the ocean.
[00:44:33.200]But is there an opportunity for that sort of thing to drain the soil,
[00:44:37.520]at least lower the water table a bit, and be able to manage the water more carefully?
[00:44:44.460]Keep that salt down?
[00:44:47.240]Yeah, currently there are a couple of side projects in GAP region,
[00:44:55.960]which is aiming to remove salt from the salinated soils.
[00:45:01.720]I don't have too much insight about the methods that they are using in those projects,
[00:45:10.200]but maybe they are using the way that you proposed here.
[00:45:14.440]But I know that once you get your soil salinated,
[00:45:20.380]it would probably take a long time to get it healed and cured again for your plants.
[00:45:31.800]But I don't know the exact insights of the projects ongoing.
[00:45:44.420]There's a gap project there in all the dams that are being built
[00:45:48.620]to retain the water for the irrigation purposes.
[00:45:51.800]Have there been any political repercussions from countries downstream,
[00:45:58.560]such as Iraq or Syria, not receiving water that they normally would have without those dams?
[00:46:06.780]By far, so by now, we didn't face any challenge from our neighbors.
[00:46:14.400]These two big rivers sourced from our country.
[00:46:20.740]So the source is in our country.
[00:46:25.280]And as far as I know, we are the international rights to do dams and watering channels on those rivers.
[00:46:35.840]It's because those rivers are sourced from our country.
[00:46:44.380]There were some conflicts between the countries of the salt, but I've never heard.
[00:46:51.620]Another question that I have here since I got the mic here is that a couple of the barriers that you were talking about earlier involved, you know, the smaller landholders and the high cost of developing irrigation, especially by those individuals and the risks that that would place them.
[00:47:14.360]I wonder what kind of activities are being done to try and overcome those kinds of barriers.
[00:47:20.260]Okay.
[00:47:21.360]Now, nowadays, it's a very good question, and very current topic in my country as well. And the government is now aiming to merge some of the fields into one piece, somehow, they are trying to
[00:47:44.340]they are trying to find a way to merge the fields and increase the sizes of the fields.
[00:47:51.580]So that way, it will be more effective or efficient or affordable to build those kinds of systems into their fields for the people. And for the age barrier, for example, in last three and five years
[00:48:14.320]ago, government again started a project. They subsidized, they gave money basically to the university, to the people graduated from agricultural universities, young people, to build their own farm, to build their own production fields. And in that way, they aimed to
[00:48:44.300]decrease the age, the mean age of the farmers. But unfortunately, it didn't work well. Yeah. And we are trying to, we are trying to work it out. Yeah.
[00:49:14.280]Hi, Janice. A really very exciting talk. Thank you. Your presentation was very nice. I'm just, I have different questions, not on the research, but I'm curious, when you secure the funding from different, different agency, and European Union is big agency that cover whole Europe, right? Yeah, right. So I'm kind of curious that when you, because Turkey, Turkey has that kind of problem, crowd and then other side, you have a lot of
[00:49:44.260]water, but is a gap of using wisdom by smartly use that water. So it's how, how do you present your concern to Union, European Union to fund you? Because it could be the other problem in other countries also. Nice. So how you fight to bring the grants to your country, even you have a severe problem. So you are basically asking how did you get the money?
[00:50:14.240]Yes, you collaborate with other countries, other countries can also have that problem, right?
[00:50:25.740]Exactly. So how your country compete with other countries?
[00:50:28.860]Yeah, it's a thanks. Thanks for thank you for the question. It's a little bit detailed subject, but briefly in European Union, there are a couple of calls, a couple of calls in different in different aims, in different purposes.
[00:50:44.220]For my call, this project's call, it's called Tivining Action. The Tivining Action aims to get one institution from a developing country and a couple of institutions from ruling countries such as Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and developing one in this case is us.
[00:51:14.200]For my call, this project's call, it's called Tivining Action. The Tivining Action aims to get one institution from a developing country and a couple of institutions from ruling countries such as Netherlands, Germany, and developing one in this case is us.
[00:51:44.180]For my call, this project's call, it's called Tivining Action. The Tivining Action aims to get one institution from a developing country and a couple of institutions from ruling countries such as Netherlands, Germany, and developing one in this case is us.
[00:52:14.160]So I was kind of curious that how you developed a collaborative project. So yeah, thank you.
[00:52:19.020]Yeah, thank you.
[00:52:21.160]Hey, Deniz, that was a really good talk. It was really interesting how I agree with the water and wisdom and how both those need to come together, but I can see how a big piece of it might be switching to those alternative crops and just straight up saving the amount of water you need. Is there any incentive
[00:52:44.140]programs to get farmers to switch over to those? You mentioned how it was going to be a slow change
[00:52:47.620]and farmers see their neighbors doing it. Is there anything that's going to push that forward? Any
[00:52:51.300]government incentives to grow these crops or anything like that? Yeah, it's a really good
[00:52:54.880]question. Three years ago in 2022, our Research and Investigation, Research and Innovation
[00:53:04.000]Council decided to open a call specifically for millets like this. And as you know,
[00:53:14.120]these are the things that you cannot get results in three years, four years, five years,
[00:53:21.080]and the project is undergoing. Personally, I have a couple of plans from my side, you know.
[00:53:29.860]Yeah, and there are plenty of projects undergoing to introduce those new crops into the areas.
[00:53:38.180]And yeah, but they are long-term projects. Thank you.
[00:53:44.100]All right. Nothing online? All right. In that case, let's thank our speaker again. Deniz, great talk.
[00:53:50.720]Thank you.
[00:53:51.020]Thank you.
[00:53:51.260]Thank you.
[00:53:56.360]Thank you.

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"Water or Wisdom? Tackling Agriculture Sustainability in Türkiye"

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