Problem of productivity in the Turkish agricultural sector in the context of eu membership process: A comparison of per capita agricultural land, labour and land productivity in Turkey, Spain and Greece (1971 ? 2004); 25 year of projections, scenarios and their implications

Average productivity of labor in the agricultural sector (APLAg) is identical to ?Cultivated Land per Agricultural-Labor? (CL/LA) times Land Productivity (LP). The ?rESP/TR? (i.e., (APLA)ES /(APLA)TR ) and ?rGR/TR?, which were both about 2.6 in 1971, have increased (respectively) to 12.5 and 7.1 in 2004. This precipitous increase turned out to be explained not by relative LP changes but rather by changes in CL/L. The latter explains more than 90% of the aforementioned rise in r-ratios. These findings led us to estimate a total of 36 trend lines of (APLA), (CL/ LA), LP and r for Spain, Greece and Turkey for the 1971-2004 period, which was divided into two sub-periods, namely, the pre-1980?s and the post-1980?s. Using the coefficients of these trend lines a total of 24 projections were made estimating the 2030 values of the said 4 variables for the said three countries. The results of these quantitative efforts would be too long to summarize, but a few highlights maybe mentioned: (i) rESP/TR and ?rGR/TR? have risen so precipitously because (CL/ LA) in Spain and Greece increased at substantial rates while (CL/ LA)TR fell in the periods studied; and the large increases found in (CL/LA)X / (CL/LA)TR was due solely to rapid falls in agricultural employment (LA) in Spain and Greece --?solely?, because CL has declined in Spain and Greece faster than it did in Turkey. (2) rESP/TR and rGR/TR were projected to rise, respectively, from 12.5 to 34 and from 7.1 to 14 by the year 2030, These linear projections, however, are not good estimators because LA have also started to fall in Turkey since the year 200-2001. Had there been sufficient observations to estimate trend lines and make projections, r2030 then projected would have most likely yielded less than one-half the values quoted above. But, even if they were to yield 11 and 5 instead of 34 and 14, this would still mean that Turkey would fall further behind. Thus, the main results of Chapters 1 and 2 have indicated that if Turkey is to complete her transformation into an industrialized country and meanwhile raise agricultural labor-productivity substantially, she must decrease her LA by no less than a factor of three.This has led us to the development of a model yielding scenarios for depicting alternative futures for Turkey in the next quarter of a century. The model defines four aims : (i) Unemployment shall not rise. (ii) LA shall decline by a factor of 3. (iii) In order to raise APL in the non-agricultural sectors and also in order to close the present gap with Spain as regards this variable, gross investment per new-employment (IB/?L) shall be increased by 150% or 200% and (iv) Current Account Balance be maintained. The 2004 values and 2030-projections of parametric-variables such as the z-ratios (Employment / Sectoral Pop.) and the population growth rates endemic to the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors were estimated and the paths they would follow to 2030 were defined by parabolic functions. Using the time series thus obtained, the model estimated the series for employment in the non-agricultural sector (LNAG )t needed so that unemployment would not rise and taking the first difference of the series (?LNAG)t were produced.How much gross-investment (IB)t needs be made to employ (?LNAG)t? The (IB)t series were derived by multiplying (?LNAG)t and (IB/?L)t .(The latter were targeted to increase by 150% and 200% by 2030 per definition of aim (iii)) Three average GDP growth rates were selected to denote ?the bad? ?the mediocre? and ?the good? scenarios --namely,. g= 4%; 5.5% and 6.5%. Thus six basic scenarios were derived. Only one of these truly fulfills the 4 aims as had been defined and also are economically viable. The conclusion is that in order to fulfill all four aims, the savings ratio in Turkey must be raised to at least 34%-35% during the next 25 years or otherwise very substantial concessions must be made from all the 4 aims or some combination of them. Conversely, it was shown in Chapter 4, that continuing to save only15-16% of the GDP would mean either adding up to 15 millions to the present army of 2.5 millions unemployed (which is totally unacceptable and even impossible for this would lead to the collapse of the regime) or else (I) add a few more million to the ranks of the unemployed, plus (ii) forfeit the goal of decreasing LAG by some 70% by 2030 years and settle down for a mere 24% decrease in agricultural employment (which would mean that her farmers would remain poor) and plus (iii) use substantial foreign savings (say about equal to 5% of the GDP), in which case she would still fall further behind Spain in terms of (IB/?L)t and therefore in terms of APL, MPL and wages in the non-agricultural sector too. The net result is that Turkey must increase her domestic savings rate by about 100% or otherwise she might be setting-out on the route to ?Pakistanization?.