Farmers' Attitudes toward Public Support Policy for Sustainable Agriculture in GAP-Şanlıurfa, Turkey

Sevinç Sevinç,Aydoğdu Aydoğdu,Cançelik Cançelik

doi:10.3390/su11236617

Abstract

Despite agricultural support in Turkey, agricultural production areas, production quantities, and the number of farmers have gradually decreased. In this research, we aimed to determine farmers’ attitudes toward public agricultural support policy for sustainability in GAP, Şanlıurfa, Turkey, and the factors affecting their attitudes. This research is the first of its type for GAP, Şanlıurfa, Turkey. The data were obtained in 2017 from face-to-face interviews with farmers who were selected using the simple random sampling method. Categorical regression, based on the optimal scaling model, was used in the analysis. The results indicate that although 80% of the farmers believe that support has improved agricultural sustainability, 76.2% find public support policy inadequate. The average land area of those who were in favor of the policy was 18.3 hectares, whereas that of those who stated that support does not provide a significant contribution was 7.17 hectares. The age of the farmer, total cultivated area, settlement area, education level, property type, crop pattern, irrigated agriculture, and income were factors affecting farmers’ attitudes. The support policy should be reviewed for small-scale farmers and farmers who engage in dry farming. The results could be helpful to support policy and decision-makers during sustainable agriculture policy planning.

Highlights

Many policies have been implemented to improve agricultural sustainability, covering the environment, economy, and society [1] in countries
Significance is measured by the coefficient of determination (R2) to assess to what extent independent variables can explain the dependent variable in categorical regression. β coefficients are obtained from categorical regression, and digitized values of the variable categories are obtained by optimal scaling
The variables used in the research and their digitized values and forms are provided in Table 1, which presents the frequencies of each variable category and the digitized forms obtained by applying the alternating least squares algorithm

Summary

Introduction

Many policies have been implemented to improve agricultural sustainability, covering the environment, economy, and society [1] in countries They are still far from meeting the growing and diversifying needs in many countries where agriculture plays an important role in development, and influences livelihoods. Agriculture benefits all living things if done properly, and faces problems mostly arise from human activities based on increasing demands that cause deterioration in quality and quantity in agricultural areas [12,13]. Together with these deteriorations, increased input prices and low incomes cause farmers to abandon agriculture. In-depth research conducted through multidimensional analysis is needed [17] that should mostly focus on social processes and different approaches rather than a lack of agronomic knowledge [18], where special attention should be paid to rural life and farmers

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Conclusion