An agricultural database application devoted to geographic information system for province based agricultural production planning

SUMMARY An Agricultural Database Application Devoted to Geographic Information System for Province Based Agricultural Production Planning Agricultural sector is very important for its direct relation to manufacturing foodstuffs and nutrition, having a great number of active population and labor force, its contribution to national income, and providing row material and capital to industry. On the other hand, in the process of Turkey's accession to the EU, adaptation of this important sector to common agricultural policy is required. For this purpose, re-structuring in agriculture and reform projects were started in Turkey. These projects aiming at planning, control and support of agricultural production are Farmer Record System (FRS), Direct Payment (DP) and Alternative Crop. These projects was started to be applied nationwide as of 2001. Nevertheless, spatial infrastructure to apply the projects properly is inadequate. This situation causes not to get adequate performance from these applications. Therefore, in the field of agricultural production, Agricultural Information System (AIS) is needed as a reliable component of national land information system. In this study, regarding to FRS, DP, Alternative Crop etc., which are the applications adopted with the process of Turkey's accession to the EU, some spatial data requirement analyses and examinations were realized in rural institutions (province directorships) of ministry of agriculture and rural affairs. In this context, required spatial AIS was designed. Basic data standards and, in relation to these standards, current data sources relating to data classes in the design were analyzed. In addition to this, in the application areas, some possible techniques were applied and tested for the acquisition of land cover data having a crucial role in planning agricultural production and being a main spatial base for FRS. These techniques were compared in technical, economical and applicability aspects. Furthermore, in Trabzon province selected as pilot area, effectiveness of FRS, applied by the ministry, was examined and analyzed. Keywords: Geographic Information System, Agricultural Information System, Farmer Record System, Direct Payment, Remote Sensing, Photogrammetry, Orthophoto. VI