Digital Agriculture: Injecting New Vitality into Turkish Agriculture

Turkey, this magical land straddling Europe and Asia, has a long - standing agricultural tradition deeply ingrained in the long river of its culture and economy. Fertile plains give birth to grains such as wheat and barley, and diverse regions abound in cotton, sugar beet, sunflower, as well as a wide variety of fruits like apples, cherries, and citrus. However, Turkish agriculture is currently facing severe challenges. Over the past 18 years, the population has increased by 23%, but the number of farmers has plummeted by 21%. Among the remaining 2.17 million farmers, only 289,000 are women, and the average age of farmers is 58.1 years old. This change in the population structure seriously threatens the continuity and innovation of agricultural production.

In the face of these difficulties, digital agriculture and irrigation automation technologies are like a beam of dawn, illuminating the future path of Turkish agriculture. Among them, Netafim's GrowSphere™ MAX technology stands out. It uses data - driven irrigation and fertigation to achieve advanced planning, scheduling, monitoring, and control. Farmers can even operate remotely through digital devices, completely bidding farewell to the hardships of working in the fields under the sweltering heat.

Bünyamin Çuhadar, a 61 - year - old farmer with nearly 30 years of farming experience, is a pioneer of digital agriculture. He grows a variety of crops, including corn, potatoes, wheat, sunflower, and alfalfa, on 200 hectares of land in Karatay, Konya Province, an important agricultural production area in Turkey. Since 2014, he has been a loyal user of Netafim products and has adopted various irrigation methods, including subsurface and surface drip irrigation and sprinklers. In recent years, he has introduced digital agriculture technologies on a large scale and deployed the GrowSphere™ MAX controller on his farm. This system is powerful, supporting multiple mainlines, over 100 sensors, and capable of managing up to 256 valves, perfectly suiting the needs for precision and efficiency of medium - to - large - scale farms like his. Since installing the first subsurface drip irrigation system and enabling the first controller in 2018, he has successively added 4 more units. He said, "Precise water management is crucial, especially during extreme weather. GrowSphere™ MAX has made my irrigation process more efficient, greatly reducing labor and allowing me to flexibly adjust the water schedule according to the climate."

In Adana, further south, Refik Yenice represents the new generation of tech - savvy farmers. As a second - generation farmer who has received extensive education abroad, Yenice brings new ideas to his family's 250 - hectare farm of citrus, corn, and soybeans. Although there is no shortage of water in his region, facing the rising energy costs and labor shortages, he realizes that automation is an inevitable choice to improve resource utilization efficiency and sustainability. Driven by him, the farm has extended Netafim's drip irrigation technology from citrus cultivation to field crops such as corn and soybeans. GrowSphere™ MAX provides a unified platform for precisely managing water and fertilizer needs. He praised, "GrowSphere™ MAX has enabled us to achieve remote operation and improve efficiency. We can control the irrigation of two separate mainlines for corn and citrus through a single device, using less water and energy and reducing the need for human supervision."

The successful practices of Bünyamin Çuhadar and Refik Yenice fully demonstrate the great potential of digital agriculture technologies such as GrowSphere™ MAX to transform Turkish agriculture. This digital transformation is expected to make agriculture more attractive to the younger generation and make it easier for them to participate. By integrating innovative technologies, Turkish farmers can increase productivity, optimize resource utilization, embrace the future while inheriting agricultural traditions, and enable agriculture to continue to be an important pillar of Turkey's economy and cultural heritage, bringing new vitality and vigor to Turkish agriculture.