Analysis of the factors affecting the tendency of farmers in Aksu district of Antalya province

Misapplications during agricultural production bring along various problems in terms of human and environmental health. These faulty practices cause the reliability of the produced products to be questioned. Consumers desire to know where, under which conditions, and by which methods the products they buy are produced, result in farmers to need systems that provide assurance to answer these questions. The system, in which the production process is recorded within certain standards, is recognized as Good Agriculture Practices (GLOBALGAP) in the world and Good Agricultural Practices (ITU) in Turkey. In this study, the development of the process was examined and the factors which were effective in the decision-making process of the producers on good agriculture practices were tried to be revealed. The development process of good agricultural practices in the world and in Turkey has been examined along with secondary data. The primary data of the study consists of questionnaire interviews with a total of 100 producers, 50 of which are good agriculture practitioners and 50 are not good agriculture practitioners in Aksu district of Antalya province. The obtained data were transferred to the SPSS application and analysed. In these analyses, continuous but non-normally distributed data (age, farm size, etc.) determined for groups that do and do not practice good agriculture were subjected to the Mann-Whitney U test, and discrete data (gender, education, etc.) were subjected to the chi-square test. examined whether there is a difference. The independent variables which were found to be significantly different between groups that did and did not practice good agriculture were included in the logistic regression analysis. As a result of the analyses, the education level of the producers, monthly income, land width, the place where the products are sold, the situation of applying and adopting the innovations, the sources of learning the innovation techniques, the place where the good agricultural practice is heard for the first time, whether it is necessary, the economic yield, the market situation, the status of participating in the training, the willingness to participate in the training has a significant effect on the outcome of the results. Market advantage is the most important actor in line with the variables that are meaningful in questions about good agriculture. Market advantage (48%) is the first reason for the producers to consider good agricultural practices as necessary, and the lack of market advantage (54%) is the first reason for not considering it as a necessity. As a result of the logistic regression analysis, the most effective variable was found to be the land width for the producers to practice good agriculture. An increase of 1 unit in the width of the land increases the probability of good agriculture practice 72,824 times. The second most influential factor is the farmers participation in training on good agriculture practice. Participating in education increases the tendency to practice good agriculture 20,372 times. It is important to provide market advantage and to ensure continuity in support for the spread of good agricultural practices. Raising awareness among producers and consumers about the subject and creating demand plays a triggering role in the spread of ITU. KEYWORDS: Good agricultural, GLOBALGAP, GAP, Sustainable agriculture, Sustainable production, Antalya. COMMITTEE: Prof. Dr. Orhan ÖZÇATALBAŞ Asst. Prof. Dr. Yavuz TAŞÇIOĞLU Asst. Prof. Dr. Mehmet AYDOĞAN