Period of implementation of the project: 

Since 2014

Challenge: 

Today, the agricultural sector takes about 9%  of Turkey’s economy and represents 25% of total employment. In total,23.8 million hectares of agricultural land in the country consists of 30 million parcels with 40 million owners due to divisions arising from the law regarding the inheritance. Our farmer’s production cost increases with increasing agricultural equipment and their fixed costs incurred for each of the fragmented lands; hence their income  decreases day by day.

Şekerbank aimed to prevent farmers from abandoning their land for economic reasons, migration from rural areas to the cities and the loss of land due to division through inheritance.

Solution: 

Within the scope of the works, carried out for the survival of family farming, a Field Enlargement Loan was given under the “Family Farming Banking” project in order to expand the lands where agricultural activities are carried out and to bring the idle lands for production due to inheritance or migration.  

In addition, Agricultural Equipment Loans are given to bring the machines to process the soil in terms of modern standards, thus the project also aims both modernizing the farms and enabling them to make production more efficient. 

The energy efficiency in agriculture has another major impact on production efficiency and mitigating the effects of climate change. For this reason, it is aimed to support farmers in making more efficient production by reducing their energy consumption with the Agricultural ECO Loan. 

Farmers have a better quality irrigation with less water consumption. Thus, while saving labor and energy, it contributes to getting more efficiency and decreasing the production costs. 

Şekerbank also provides additional non-financial services through more than 250 agricultural banking customer representatives who have expertise in community banking. Most of these representatives are agricultural engineers and they have a deep knowledge about their region and the indigenous agricultural products. They visit farmers in villages and their fields, and provide them with the proper information and solutions to increase agricultural productivity and efficiency.

Results: 

“Family Farming Banking”, has provided TL 9,4 billion in financing support to 119 thousand families in 5 years. With the aforementioned financial support, the idle lands were brought back to production and the fragmented fields were combined; agricultural machinery and equipment parks were renewed and modern agricultural techniques were applied. These developments increased the income of the farmers and energy efficiency investments were another aspect that contributed to the savings of farmers. While allowing to finance the new investments related to production in rural areas, Şekerbank also provided different loans to local farmers to support families who marry their children, send their daughters to university and want to buy houses or vehicles.

Within the scope of the same project, as the supporter of the ‘Strengthening Women Entrepreneurship Program in Agriculture’ initiated by the Republic of Turkey Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Şekerbank supported entrepreneurship training for more than 400 women farmers in 8 provinces in order to strengthen women entrepreneurship in agriculture provided a total of TL 700 thousand in financing for more than 5 thousand projects under this program last five years, the Bank also contributes to the realization of projects of women entrepreneurs in agriculture.

Over 10 thousand shares posted under the hashtag #senbırakıpgitmediye (“so that you don’t leave”) by the farmers who hardly ever use Twitter.

Category: Prosperity

Company: ŞEKERBANK

About the company: 

The tradition of responsible banking derived from its deep roots is the driving force of all of Şekerbank’s activities as it was founded on October 12, 1953 to support economic development based on rural improvement by providing financing for production and agricultural industry whilst continuing to carry out this mission.

Sustainable Development Goals