Photo: ©FAO

Ankara - The combined effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the recent drought and the impacts of the climate crisis have reaffirmed the strategic importance of food and agriculture at both the national and global level. All these factors are prompting countries to step up their efforts to avoid food crises and fortify their national food security.

In this context, a project entitled “Supply Chain Analysis for the Turkish Wheat Sector: Building a Resilient Food System” has been launched under the joint coordination of the UN Resident Coordinator Office in Türkiye, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP) in cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. As part of the project, FAO experts and technical teams have conducted field interviews with input suppliers, farmers, producer organizations and industrialists in eight leading wheat-producing provinces across Türkiye.

Following a series of consultation meetings held in Ankara with different Ministry institutions, workshops were organized in two important production centres for wheat and wheat-based products: Gaziantep and Tekirdağ. The workshops featured the participation of all local stakeholders as well as producers, industrialists, academics and professional organizations.

Ayşegül Selışık, Assistant FAO Representative in Türkiye, gave the opening speech highlighting some of the key problems and threats facing the sector as well as solutions and opportunities. She emphasized the unprecedented global challenges of the last few years, all of which have underlined the strategic importance of agricultural production and the food industry. Explaining that sustainable production in agriculture has become a priority to guarantee food security, Selışık noted that Türkiye is an important global actor in wheat both in terms of production and foreign trade. By the end of the present project, the aim is to have “a clear picture of the Turkish wheat sector”, Selışık said, “producing a road map that will benefit not just Türkiye, but both also the wider region and the world.”

FAO Project Coordinator, Prof. Dr Erdoğan Güneş, confirmed this ambition, explaining that “by the end of the project, the final report will show how Türkiye – an important global wheat producer – can further develop production while increasing the resilience of the wheat, flour and bakery product sector to internal and external problems.”

Following the opening speeches, FAO experts participated in the all-day roundtable discussions, asking participants to share their first-hand experiences of problems encountered in the sector and taking careful note of their recommendations for solutions.

The project is funded under the Development Emergency Modality of the United Nations Joint Fund for Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDG Fund). By conducting a supply chain analysis of Türkiye’s wheat sector, the project aims to determine key interventions to increase the sector’s resilience to shocks and to meet associated investment and service needs. All these efforts are expected to contribute to national food security and the transition to a more sustainable agriculture and food system.

Following the local workshops in Gaziantep and Tekirdağ and the consultation meetings, a comprehensive report on wheat, flour and bakery products will be prepared. This will form the basis of policy recommendations and the development of a road map which will contribute to the sector becoming more effective, resilient, inclusive and sustainable at every stage of the supply chain, from farm to fork.