مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - A Regional Comparative Analysis of Farmers’ Approaches to Livestock Support Policies

Abstract :

Livestock support policies have been implemented in different periods of years, various weights and different methods to develop livestock industry. There have been important changes in animal support policies starting from 2000. During the period of 2004 and 2008, forage crops, milk incentive premium, artificial insemination and calf supports became the most important support items. In this study, it was aimed to investigate farmers’ approaches to livestock support policies by making a regional comparison and by taking the features of the farms and the animal growers into consideration as well. The study was conducted in the Western Thrace Region (WTR) and the North Eastern Anatolia Region (NEAR) in the NUTS I regions. In this study, the number of the surveys was determined to be 540 by using the Simple Random Sampling method and the obtained data were loaded to an Excel file and their descriptive (crosstabing) analyses were performed in the LIMDEP package program. As a result, when the WTR and the NEAR were compared, it was found that the animal growers in the WTR have lower average of age, higher education level and less non-agricultural activities rather than those in the NEAR as well as they produce not only for domestic needs but also for the market and they benefit from the supports in question more than animal growers in the NEAR; however, the difference between the two regions in benefiting from the forage crops support was found to be gradually decreasing. It was also determined in the study that there are differences between regions in benefiting from the supports. Therefore, it is necessary that a support system considering regional differences be created by taking the farmers’ approaches to the supports into account.