World Farmers' day marked in Ankara

The World Farmers’ Day was marked yesterday by the Union of Turkish Chambers of Agriculture (TZOB) in a summit organized in Ankara. The agriculture issue was the main agenda of summit, which was attended by President Abdullah Gul, Parliament Speaker Cemil Cicek, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, as well as many other ministers. Speaking at the summit, Gul expressed his gladness over the progress made in modern stockbreeding in Turkey. Stating that Turkey is one of the rare countries which is self-sufficient in agriculture thanks to its export totaling approximately $14 billion and import amounting to $10 billion, Gul said that Turkey fed not only its own people, but also visiting tourists and guests and earned foreign trade surplus of nearly $4 billion through exports. Gul added that these figures filled them with pride, but production could be further increased through Turkey’s current potential. For his part, Erdogan said Turkey has increased its gross domestic product in agriculture from $23.7 billion to $62.7 billionsince 2002 and that per capita income in the sector rose from $1,000 to $3,653 in the same period. Erdogan added that Turkey now ranked the 7th in the world and the first one in Europe in terms of agricultural economic growth thanks to such improvements.