Yasemin Kilic

By focusing on an important agricultural niche in Turkey–apple farming– Yasemin Kılıç is popularizing organic farming to replace harmful and expensive chemical fertilizers and pesticides and allow small-scale farmers to stay in business.

Yasemin is teaching small-scale, organic-produce farmers the techniques they need to allow them to continue earning a living and to resist agribusiness, which is claiming more and more of Turkey's production each year. To demonstrate that organic production is viable, she has carefully chosen a high-yield crop that accounts for a large part of Turkey's agricultural production: the apple. Turkey is the fourth largest producer of apples in the world, and 9 out of 10 people in the region in which she works tend orchards for a living. Thus, by gathering and building on the knowledge currently in use, and spreading it to farmers throughout the apple-producing region of Turkey, Yasemin is organizing farmers in a way that can drive local and regional production–not just with apple production but with lesser crops as well. She shows that organic farming can produce high yields and cut production costs over the long run by reducing fertilizer and pesticides expenses and allowing soil to remain fertile and productive for many years. As environmental issues worsen and migration escalates, product alternatives and sustainable farming techniques are desperately needed. Yasemin is helping people other than farmers see this as well: she is engaging mayors, university professors, and the public.

Yasemin's work tackles two problems at once: economic and environmental. On the one hand, large agricultural producers claim hundreds of acres of land annually, clearing them to allow easy, but short-sighted production. Unable to survive, small-scale farmers are forced off their land into the already overcrowded cities. They lack the skills that allow them to find jobs in urban areas; even more, the knowledge they have grown up with and begun to pass on to their children–which crops to plant, when to plant, what species are best suited for certain soil types or climates–fades from the culture as the link with the land is severed.

A second, growing problem is linked more closely to the immediate threat to the environment. For example, Lake Eğirdir, is the only freshwater lake in Turkey and an important source of drinking water. Increasingly, the area is threatened by chemicals that leak into the water system, making the water hazardous to drink and use for crop irrigation. Ill-informed agricultural policies coupled with inappropriate farming techniques have brought about declining environmental conditions in this and many other parts of the country. Starting about 20 years ago, companies introduced fertilizers and pesticides to farmers–initially offering the chemicals for free or at very low cost. Few regulations limited the use of these chemicals, and farmers dropped their traditional methods–methods which ensured long-term sustainability–in favor of what they believed were progressive methods. What time has shown is that everyone has lost out: farmers must now use more chemicals to maintain a constant yield, and they do so at the expense of the environment and ecosystems. Fertilizers and pesticides are no longer free, and the expense has put many small-scale farmers out of business, sending them as refugees to the city to seek work.

After searching the country, Yasemin settled on the area around Isparta, in the heart of the apple-producing region, to begin her work. She saw that the region was best suited to demonstrate her idea on the scale needed to support it, since over 90 percent of the people produce apples. Everyone's job somehow relates to apples. Initially, she focused on her own orchards, cultivating rich soil from natural fertilizers and restoring nutrients through techniques she had learned from farmers throughout the country and from studies about ecological farming. When she started, most local residents in this predominantly agricultural area were dubious that apple and other fruit trees could be successfully grown without the aid of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Now that she has established a high-yielding orchard, she is showing others that the techniques she used can be adjusted to support other crops as well–in ways that reduce costs and guarantee the long-term health of soil, crops, and income.

She realized that only by proving that the economics of production favored organic techniques would she successfully promote her idea to small-scale farmers throughout Turkey. Thus, she plans to create an information center in the nearby town and regularly hosts local authorities, university students, and others at her orchard, showing them what works, how it works, why it will continue to work, and what they can do to adopt her techniques. Importantly, she reaches out to other allies as well, including universities in Turkey and abroad, another apple-producing area of the world. She hosts visiting faculty at her farm, and brings in local farmers to share their experiences, learn new techniques, and spread what works to others in the region. She translates information available on organic farming into Turkish, and writes and distributes step-by-step guides that help farmers draw on the best practices available internationally.

Yasemin has begun the next phase of her work: building an alliance among farmers, consumers, and municipalities. She has begun organizing farmers to promote organic methods and work together to save on transportation costs of reaching distant markets with their produce. In this way, small-scale farmers gain stability by supplying a steady stream of high-quality organic products to consumers throughout the country, and consumers grow to depend on organic produce and understand more fully its link with good nourishment and a healthy economy and environment.

Yasemin grew up in a rural area of Germany and, as a child, loved to work in her parents' vineyards. The water in their village became unsafe to drink when she was young, causing Yasemin to view the environment, and her relationship to it differently. Following school she moved to Crete and learned the local practices of planting and harvesting practiced by farmers in her mountain village.

Yasemin left Crete for Turkey 24 years ago to begin her work. Realizing that she would need to find an industry niche to demonstrate her ideas on a large scale and with a product applicable to many farmers in Turkey, she and her husband set out to learn about apple production. She travelled the country and collected ideas, learned the lay of the land and the industry, and finally chose the region she now lives in.