Turkey irrigation
Getting enough water to crops is a major problem for many Turkish farmers. Precipitation tends to relatively frequent and regular in the coastal areas because the mountains beyond. However, the majority of agricultural land on the Anatolian plateau, the less precipitation, because it is surrounded by mountains, receives. Although rainfall varies considerably on the plateau between the regions, it is barely adequate over large areas. In addition, vary the amount and timing of rainfall strongly from year to year, leading to large fluctuations in crop yields. Since the Second World War, officials have stressed that irrigation has a way of increasing and stabilizing agricultural production and irrigation consumes more than half of public investment in agriculture.
In the mid-1980s, observers estimated that private irrigation, depending on small weirs and barrages direct water in areas that met up to one million hectares. In addition, some farmers pumped water from wells to irrigate their own fields. Development of large irrigation was delayed until the 1960s. Public irrigation systems, built and operated by the General Directorate of State Hydraulic (Devlet Su Isleri – DSI) of the Ministry of Energy and natural resources tend to be large and expensive. Most provide water for entire valleys, and some large projects – for example, connect the Southeast Anatolia Project (Güneydogu Anadolu Projesi – GAP) – Water supply for urban areas, flood protection, hydropower and irrigation. Irrigation projects are scattered throughout the country, but most are in the coastal regions of the Aegean and Mediterranean seas, where the longer growing seasons are concentrated particularly favorable for crops. Public irrigation was available to 3.7 million hectares in the mid-1990s, although the area was irrigated with the public at around 3 million hectares.
Deficiencies in the irrigation contain a serious lag between the construction of the main parts of an irrigation system and the completion of the land leveling and drainage on farms. In addition, crop research and farmer training are not sufficient to insure the cultivation of crops suitable to obtain maximum yields from irrigated areas. In the late 1970s, government officials estimated that it was only a third of irrigated land cultivated to its full potential. Moreover, low fees had not initially allow the authorities to recover their initial investment, the fees were set in the 1980s, however.
Important projects have been planned to expand the irrigation because the government surveys had indicated that the irrigation of up to 8.7 million hectares was possible. The most important project of the late 1980s and early 1990s the gap, which is associated with the 2,400-megawatt Ataturk Dam on the Euphrates and is expected to be 1.7 million hectares when it is completed in 2002, water. The system consists of a two-hole 24.6 km long tunnel that will take the water from the reservoir to irrigate the area around Harran, Mardin and Ceylanpınar in southeastern Turkey. In the GAP region, farmers face a six-month dry season so that they are a cash crop per year. Irrigation is likely to expand to two or even three harvests. Crop rotation, which is largely unknown in areas without irrigation is introduced in the GAP region. Winter vegetables are expected to alternate with cotton as the summer harvest. Although wheat and pulses dominate cropping patterns, cotton could be a larger proportion than the increased access to water. The government, that the CAP projects Turkish wheat production by more than 50 percent, barley by a similar figure, and in the region increases the production of cotton by more than four times in 2005, bringing the national cotton production by 60 percent. The value of food surpluses to expect from this project, resulting in estimated U.S. $ 5000000000.
Recent Comments