Thanks to the cooperation initiated by GÜBRETAŞ with the support of the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) and the Cyprus Agricultural Supplies Cooperative, conscious agricultural activities that will increase agricultural productivity are carried out in Yavru Vatan. In this context, potatoes were harvested in one of the model production areas planned in the autumn of 2019.

In the trial planting, where conscious agricultural techniques based on soil analysis and a balanced plant nutrition program were applied, a yield twice the regional average was achieved, with a potato harvest of 7,500 kg per decare, despite using 40% less base fertilizer.

TRNC MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE AND NATURAL RESOURCES OĞUZ: “THE SHARE OF AGRICULTURE IN DEVELOPMENT WILL INCREASE”

Making an evaluation on the subject, Dursun Oğuz, Minister of Agriculture and Natural Resources of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), said: “One of our main priorities is for agricultural producers who will benefit the development of our country to produce quality products and to market these products and generate more income. "In line with this goal, we support the existing work carried out between the Cyprus Agricultural Supplies Cooperative, Turkish Agricultural Credit Cooperatives and GÜBRETAŞ in previous years to further develop the cooperation with Turkey in the agricultural sector with new projects," he said.

Minister of Agriculture and Natural Resources Oğuz said, "For this purpose, we attach great importance to the activities to popularize conscious agriculture, which were initiated in the TRNC with farmer training meetings in recent years. We were very pleased that very high yield and quality were obtained this year from a potato model field application that we decided to carry out last summer and which is a reflection of the efforts to develop agriculture. "These results are promising examples of the contribution of agricultural production in Northern Cyprus to economic development in the new period," he said.

Minister of Agriculture Oğuz said, "Especially thanks to the irrigation projects being implemented with the support of Turkey, the share and importance of agriculture in the economic growth of Northern Cyprus will increase further in the coming years. "For this reason, we will continue to increase our support for conscious agricultural activities that we think will benefit the country's agriculture, increasing product diversity and quality in agriculture, and the income of our farmers," he said.

AGRICULTURAL CREDIT GENERAL MANAGER DR. FAHRETTIN POYRAZ: “WE ARE STRENGTHENING THE COOPERATION IN THE FIELD OF AGRICULTURE”

General Manager of Turkish Agricultural Credit Cooperatives and Chairman of GÜBRETAŞ Board of Directors, Dr. Fahrettin Poyraz pointed out that they have taken their long-standing commercial cooperation to a different dimension, especially in the last three years.

“In addition to commercial cooperation in the field of agriculture in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, we contribute to conscious agriculture with training and exemplary practices,” said Fahrettin Poyraz, adding: “We have a connection through our company, GÜBRETAŞ, for the supply of fertilizer, which was mainly needed in Northern Cyprus in previous years. There was. By making this more comprehensive in 2017, we started to mutually evaluate what benefits we could provide to agricultural production in TRNC. As a result, on the one hand, GÜBRETAŞ started to implement farmer training, soil analysis and agricultural consultancy services to producers, which it has been providing for years in Turkey, in Northern Cyprus, and on the other hand, by expanding this cooperation with other companies under the umbrella of Turkish Agricultural Credit Cooperatives to different areas. "We strengthened it."

Reminding that at the end of 2018, with the presence of the ministers of agriculture of Turkey and TRNC, a cooperation protocol was signed between the two countries aiming to complement each other in fertilizers, greenhouses, drip irrigation, medicines and other agriculture-related issues, Poyraz said, "We believe in the potential of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and realize the potential in the field of agriculture." "We are excited to contribute to its transformation into maximum benefit," he said.

Stating that Agricultural Credit Cooperatives are Turkey's largest farmer family, Dr. Fahrettin Poyraz said, “As a result of the negotiations and studies carried out since 2017, we have made significant progress. In this context, in addition to delivering some agricultural and animal products produced in Northern Cyprus to the Turkish market, we started to carry out some joint projects with the valuable support of the TRNC Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources. In our meetings last summer, we decided to increase cooperation, especially in the matter of having some agricultural products needed by Turkey produced by farmers in TRNC through contract production and brought to our country, just like our work to reach new markets for halloumi cheese. In addition, the model production area application carried out by GÜBRETAŞ at two points in Northern Cyprus in 2020 was one of the targets we set last year. "Completing one of these goals more successfully and efficiently shows that we are on the right track in this sincere cooperation," he said.

GÜBRETAŞ GENERAL MANAGER İBRAHİM YUMAKLI: “WE PROVIDED HIGHER EFFICIENCY WITH LESS FERTILIZER”

Stating that they aim to increase the quality and efficiency of agricultural products, which have an 85% share in the export revenue of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, with the use of effective fertilizers, GÜBRETAŞ General Manager İbrahim Yumaklı said, "For this purpose, our expert agricultural engineers at GÜBRETAŞ have been working with Yavru Vatan' since 2017." It provides informational training for producers in Turkey. We also supported these trainings with soil sampling, creating plant nutrition recipes and agricultural consultancy services. "Last year, we added a new step to these studies, under the coordination of the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources and the Cyprus Agricultural Supply, and implemented the 'model production area' application in two places," he said.

Moreover, in this model application, Ibrahim Yumakli pointed out that higher efficiency was achieved with less fertilizer use than normal use and said: "When we started this study, we saw that base fertilizer was used very intensively under farmer conditions in Cyprus. While the average base fertilizer in the region is 187 kg per decare, we reduced it by almost a third and applied it to 112 kg. Because we think it is right to use the amount of fertilizer needed by the soil and the plant. The way to do this is to do a soil analysis first. According to the results of our soil analysis, a balanced fertilization program was created for potato farming. While we reduced the base fertilizer by diversifying instead of uniform feeding, instead it was supplemented with potassium, magnesium and calcium elements that the potato plant needs most, as well as nitrogen in different forms and humic acid to increase the values of the weak soil.”

Yumaklı stated that thanks to this effective fertilization program, the product quality as well as the yield increased. "Normally, an average of 3,500 kg of potatoes per decare are harvested in Northern Cyprus, while 20% of this is large-sized kumpir potatoes and the rest is medium-sized seed potatoes. Mr. Kadri, the owner of the land where we did the trial planting and also one of the leading farmers of Northern Cyprus, increased the yield in the area he planted with his own methods this year to 6,000 kilograms per decare and the rate of large-sized potato potatoes up to 60%. In the area where GÜBRETAŞ agricultural engineers practiced, the yield per decare was 7,500 kg, while the amount of large size was 75%. In other words, while we increased the yield in this model area by 2 times the average of Northern Cyprus, we also increased the rate of potato potatoes, which is an indicator of quality in the harvest, by more than 3 times.”

İbrahim Yumaklı said, "We are very happy to have demonstrated practically to our producers in Northern Cyprus that maximum efficiency and quality can be achieved with optimum fertilization, thus providing added value for the agriculture and economy of the TRNC."

AGRICULTURAL SUPPLEMENTS COOPERATIVE SECRETARY GENERAL ORHAN KÜRŞAD: “OUR FARMERS WILL BE HIGHLY REWARDED FOR THEIR LABOR!”

Orhan Kürşad, Secretary General of the Agricultural Supply Machinery and Food Marketing Cooperative, the leading organization of agricultural production in Northern Cyprus, stated that they have been working with GÜBRETAŞ for years on fertilizer supply and said, "We have established the commercial cooperation with GÜBRETAŞ, especially in recent years, for the benefit of our farmers and agriculture in Cyprus. We also strengthened it with studies. "The first harvest started in the potato field in Lefke and we all witnessed that the productivity here has doubled," he said.

Orhan Kürşad stated that in this model application, in addition to the increase in efficiency, the quality increase was achieved by obtaining a potato harvest with a long shelf life and a high market value. He will have seen it. "In addition, thanks to these exemplary practices, our producers in the region both raise awareness about conscious agriculture and see the contribution of the resulting increase in efficiency and quality to their income," he said.

General Secretary Kürşad said that they aim to continue their efforts to popularize conscious agriculture in Northern Cyprus with the support of GÜBRETAŞ in the coming period and thanked those who contributed to the realization of this project, which is an example for farmers.

LANDOWNER KADRI HAMİT: “I EXPERIENCED THE BENEFITS OF CONSCIOUS AGRICULTURE”

Kadri Hamit, the owner of the field where the model production area for potatoes was implemented, stated that he was very surprised and pleased by the results of such an application, which he saw for the first time. Kadri Hamit said, "We met the GÜBRETAŞ team last year with the guidance of the relevant people from the Agricultural Supplies Cooperative. We have been farming with the traditional methods we know for years. "As the first step of this work, GÜBRETAŞ agricultural engineers analyzed our soil and created a fertilization program accordingly," he said.

Stating that the quality of potatoes they harvested in the model area is also very good, producer Kadri Hamit said, “Product quality has also increased along with the yield. The average tuber weight was 1.1 kg and we harvested 7,500 kilos per acre. I think this will also be reflected in the price of the product. Frankly, from now on, I would like to follow the path shown by GÜBRETAŞ agricultural engineers and always buy such efficient and high-quality products through conscious agriculture. "To make a long story short, we have seen with our own eyes that more product, quality and profit can be achieved with correct fertilization," he said.

GÜBRETAŞ IS THE MARKET LEADER IN TRNC AND A PIONEER IN CONSCIOUS AGRICULTURE

GÜBRETAŞ, the leading company in the chemical fertilizer sector of Agricultural Credit Cooperatives, Turkey's largest farmer union, has focused on activities to popularize conscious agriculture, especially in recent years. GÜBRETAŞ, which develops new fertilizer patterns specific to the plant and the region through its R&D studies, continues to demonstrate the efficiency effects of these special products with sample applications in "model production areas".

GÜBRETAŞ, which has achieved high efficiency and quality increases in the work on farmers' lands in different regions of Turkey for different agricultural products for years, has also been carrying out conscious agriculture dissemination training in Northern Cyprus for the last few years. In 2019, GÜBRETAŞ added a new step to these awareness trainings in Cyprus and created two separate model production areas with the support of the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources and in cooperation with the Cyprus Agricultural Supplies Cooperative.

In the trial planting carried out in the 7,300 square meter potato field in Lefke, owned by Kadri Hamit, one of the leading farmers of the TRNC, soil samples were first taken from the field and soil analysis was carried out in GÜBRETAŞ's internationally accredited laboratory. According to the soil analysis results, GÜBRETAŞ agricultural engineers created conscious plant nutrition (fertilization) programs to be applied in the field.

As a result of the sample application made in the field, where GÜBRETAŞ's 13.24.12 fertilizer developed specifically for potato plants was used, results that made the farmer happy in the potato harvest were achieved. The average potato yield for kumpir, which is around 3,500 kg per acre in Northern Cyprus, was 7,500 kg per acre in the land where the sample application was made.

Most of the average 15,000 tons of fertilizer used annually by the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which has 1.4 million decares of agricultural land, is supplied by GÜBRETAŞ.