ZMO Warns: Farmers' Credit Debt Exceeds 1.3 Trillion TL
· GıdaTarım
The Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects (TMMOB) Chamber of Agricultural Engineers (ZMO) stated that the cash credit debt of the agricultural sector to banks has exceeded 1 trillion 355 billion TL, warning that import-oriented policies are detaching producers from the land.
Emphasis on Public Interest in Agricultural Policies
The TMMOB Chamber of Agricultural Engineers (ZMO), Istanbul Branch, has shared the resolution prepared after its 50th Term 1st Advisory Board Meeting with the public. The board noted that agriculture is not merely an economic activity but directly guarantees food sovereignty and public health.
In its prepared resolution, the ZMO Advisory Board made the following assessment of current policies:
"On the contrary, policies implemented for many years based on imports, marketization, and short-term interventions are causing producers to detach from production, agricultural lands to decrease, the rural population to age, and food sovereignty and security to weaken. Our Chamber once again emphasizes that agricultural policies should not be shaped according to the short-term interests of market actors, but on the basis of public interest, food sovereignty, producer welfare, consumer rights, ecological production, and scientific planning."
Increasing Debt Burden and Subsidies
The meeting's resolution highlighted that farmers are deprived of income security and face the risk of withdrawing from production due to rising input costs. The TMMOB Chamber of Agricultural Engineers Advisory Board conveyed the producer's financial bottleneck with the following statements:
"One of the most fundamental problems in agricultural production in Turkey is that producers cannot obtain sufficient and predictable income. The failure of producer incomes to increase at a sufficient rate in the face of rising input and financing costs forces producers into debt and withdrawal from production. At the same time, the fact that the agricultural sector's cash credit debt to banks exceeds 1 trillion 355 billion TL clearly reveals the magnitude of the producer's financial burden. Agricultural production based on borrowing is not sustainable. Agricultural supports should be removed from the nature of social aid and become one of the fundamental tools of production planning. The conditions for farmers to be able to produce must be guaranteed. Production costs must be reduced, supports must be paid on time and at a sufficient level, the support system must be integrated with production planning, and producers must be prevented from being forced to sell their products below cost."
Food Inflation and Structural Solutions
The resolution pointed out that the rise in food prices stems directly from the bottleneck in the production field. The ZMO Advisory Board shared the following findings regarding inflation data and solutions:
"As of June 2026, while the CPI increased by 32.11% annually, the annual increase in the food and non-alcoholic beverages group was 35.45%. The fight against food inflation should not be conducted by suppressing production or increasing imports, but by strengthening production capacity, ensuring production continuity, and resolving structural problems in the chain from field to table."
The Chamber's management called for an urgent abandonment of the approach of controlling the market through imports.