The European Commission has published a report on the main developments in the agricultural sector and rural areas in Turkey. It completes the series of short country reports on Accession and Candidate Countries.

The report, which has been prepared within the Directorate-General for Agriculture, provides key statistical and economic information on the agricultural situation in Turkey and is primarily based on statistical information available from Eurostat, OECD and the State Institute of Statistics (SIS) in Turkey, as available in October 2003.

Following on from a general country description and a section on economic development, the report analyses the structure of farming and the value of agricultural production as well as describing crop, livestock and tobacco production.

Furthermore, the report describes, under the heading "Foreign Trade", the characteristics of general and agricultural trade in Turkey.

The chapter on agricultural policies and support deals with issues such as domestic support measures and the "Agricultural Reform Implementation Project" which aims to restructure the farm sector and public support in Turkey.

Finally the report concludes that even if agricultural employment and the number of holdings have significantly decreased over the last decade, agriculture, with its 33% share, is still the most important source of employment in Turkey.

Text of the report in PDF format (2 MB): http://europa.eu.int/comm/agriculture/external/enlarge/publi/countryrep/turkey.pdf