Turkey may need foreign grain as drought hits farmers

• Crop could be down 2m tonnes
• Earlier frost added to problems
• Shortage threatens flour exports

Turkey could be forced to increase international grain purchases this year as the domestic wheat harvest is forecast to fall short, with drought cutting yields across the country.

Turkey’s wheat crop for this year is estimated at 19 million tonnes, at least 2 million short of last season’s harvest, despite an increase in land under cultivation, the Turkish Statistics Institute said.

With domestic demand of 19.5 million tonnes or more, most of which is milled for bread, Turkey will need to look elsewhere to make up the shortfall. 

Climatic extremes will affect this season’s harvest, with yields forecast to be well down, according to Ayhan Şahbaz, head of the Çeltik Agriculture Association in the central Turkish province of Konya, the heart of the country’s wheat belt.

“Drought has been an ongoing problem despite 70 percent of the Konya plain having irrigation in place,” Şahbaz told AGBI.

“But this season, on top of drought, we had the frost some months ago and we do not yet know how badly it might have impacted the grain inside.”

Such is the extent of the drought that some growers in the northwestern provinces of Turkey have begun cutting wheat in the field a month before traditional harvest time in June, with the dried stalks being baled for animal fodder due to the grain kernels failing to mature.

The looming grain shortage also threatens one of the country’s largest food exports, flour. The government has moved to shore up supplies for processors that sell to international markets. 

In March, limits on wheat imports for milling for resale overseas were lifted by Ankara, a move that quickly saw Turkey become one of Russia’s largest customers for wheat, behind Egypt and Bangladesh, buying more than 2.5 million tonnes by April.

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Restrictions on imports had been imposed in June 2024 after a better than expected harvest saw grain stockpiles mount, prompting authorities to compel millers to buy domestic grain, though at higher prices than those of Russian suppliers. 

Despite climate change, farmers are likely to persist with grain crops, said Şahbaz.

While some growers in Konya have tried to diversify away from wheat, most returned to the staple crop after other products were found to not have worked as well, he said.

One solution that has been mooted is to plant later in the year, to take account of the shifts in the climate, Şahbaz said.

“The season seems to have moved a month forward, but problems caused by climate change will most probably continue, which will have a negative impact on yields,” he said.