2019 ASHS Annual Conference

One in four people in Turkey are involved in agriculture, and women play an important role. In the Antalya Province, many women co-own and operate small vegetable producing greenhouses with their husbands. Although women in Turkey have important roles in the agricultural sector, previous research shows that the extension system in Turkey was underserved its female audience. To address this issue and empower women farmers, we developed Suzanne’s Project in 2011. Suzanne's Project goals are to develop the technical and managerial capacities of Turkish women farmers through education, while supporting the region's economic advancement toward sustainable agriculture and gender equality. The objective was to examine the participants' socio-economic status, obtain a better understanding of their farming system and determine their level of interest in improved production technologies, business planning and management strategies. This also includes demonstrating new tools for best farm practices, building a sense of community and ultimately, empowering the women.

In September, October and November 2018, in Antalya, the Provincial Extension Service of Antalya which operates as part of the Ministry of Agriculture in Turkey conducted Suzanne’s Project training for 79 women farmers who manage tomato greenhouses. Many of them also have a dairy cow for home milk consumption; or have a few sheep; keep bees; have a small orchard; produce mushrooms, cucumbers or aromatic plants for sale. Thus, 10 people from the Provisional Extension Service taught topics in agriculture and 5 veterinary extension personnal taught livestock and sheep management and sanitation. The women ranged in age from 18 to 55, have worked on the farm an average of 15 years, and 95% of them were married. They had an average of 2.4 children and primary school was the highest level of education for 75% of them. Their greenhouses averge 2,962 square feet with 80% of them owning their farms. Eight-seven percent of them received all of their income from their farm, but most had an annual gross income of less than 2000 Turkish lira($1US equals 5.3 Turkish lira). Now 62% use extension as their primary source of information on greenhouse production, but they also use the internet and friends for information. Since one of our main goals of Suzanne’s Project is to empower women farmers, we were pleased to see that the primary reason 86% of the women gave for attending the class was to improve themselves and 29% said it was to improve their farm.