"Farming a potential headache for Turkey-EU ties 14/12/2004
If Turkey gets the go-ahead Friday to launch membership negotiations with the European Union, the toughest part of future talks is expected to be over the country's farming sector, experts say. The agricultural sector employs some 4O percent of the country's work force, but its share of GDP is only about 12 percent and falling, compared with 35 percent in 1970, 22 percent in 1980 and 16 percent in 1995. 'Adapting Turkish farming to the (EU's) common agricultural policy will be extremely painful,' predicts economist Eser Karakas. 'There are eight million people working the farming sector in Turkey -- more than in the entire European Union combined,' where the figure is about 6.5 million. Farmland covers 34 percent of Turkey but there are huge regional disparities, with the country's south and west using efficient, state-of-the art methods, while the center, east and north remain traditional, not to say backward. "
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