Development of Agricultural Credit Utilization in Türkiye

Abstract

The agricultural sector, which is an indispensable sector all over the world; It is closely related to all segments of society with its economic, social and environmental dimensions. However, due to the unique characteristics of agricultural production, farmers face many negative factors, these factors can cause fluctuations in production and, as a natural consequence, fluctuations in prices. While the fluctuations in prices create uncertainties in the income of the farmers, they also frequently cause the enterprises to experience capital insufficiency, long-term planning and financing problems. The problems experienced in agricultural production make it necessary for the farmers to resort to non-operational resources. For this reason, agricultural loans are of great importance in terms of sustainable production of enterprises. Until the 2000s, almost all of the financing needs in the agricultural sector were met only by Ziraat Bank, after the 2001 crisis, private banks began to give weight to the loans for the agricultural sector. While the amount of agricultural loans among consumer loans was 2.44 billion TL in 2002, this amount increased to 255.95 billion TL in 2022. In this study, the development of agricultural credit usage in Turkey, agricultural credit usage by regions and credit applications are discussed. In this direction, agricultural credit policies from the past to the present have been reviewed, the practices of organized credit institutions giving credit to agriculture have been comparatively examined and the place of agricultural credits in the system has been revealed.