The impact of crises on the resilience of the agricultural sector and farmers: Antalya greenhouse farmers

The aim of this study is to examine the effects of crises on the resilience of the agricultural sector and farmers. In line with this the 2015 Turkey-Russia Aircraft Crisis, and the 2018 Turkish Economic Crisis, both of which have political and an economic character have been evaluated. The reason why the Aircraft Crisis with Russia is evaluated is not only its political character, but also its ongoing economic impact on Antalya's agricultural sector. Within the framework of the mixed method analysis, the study aims to; determine how Antalya agricultural sector is affected from crisis periods, evaluate the general working conditions, economic conditions, production conditions and participation levels of farmers in agricultural strategies, determine the vulnerability of farmers in the face of crises and their adaptation methods to crises, make possible recommendations to reduce the vulnerability of the agricultural sector and farmers against crises and to strengthen their adaptation. As a result of the study, it is found out that farmers were adversely affected by both crisis periods, and that they were affected by the Aircraft Crisis, which is a politically based crisis, at a higher level. The vulnerabilities that reduce the resilience of farmers from both crisis periods are sorted out as current working conditions, input costs, borrowing, lack of access to non-governmental organizations, lack of governance and policies. Adaptation methods developed against crises are ascertained as getting support and/or incentives, making innovative production, saving, getting interest-free loans from the brokers and borrowing. Since the dependency on single market and product were determined as vulnerabilities in the Aircraft Crisis period, unlike the Economic Crisis, it was observed that the product diversity was adopted as an adaptation method. Another important result is the importance of both policies to sustain the resilience of the sector and central state policy for the farmers. KEYWORDS: Agriculture sector, Crisis, Development, Policy, Resilience