Starch Manufacturers Association (NISAD), which gathers all of the starch industrialists under a single roof, and Agricultural Credit Cooperatives, which meet the agricultural needs of their nearly 1 million farmer partners and provide purchase guarantee for their products, signed a cooperation and goodwill protocol for contracted production on the purchase and sale of maize. General Manager of Agricultural Credit Cooperatives Dr. Fahrettin Poyraz from Ankara, NISAD Chairman İsmail Başaran from Adana, and members from all over Turkey attended the signing ceremony that took place online due to the new coronavirus (Covid-19) epidemic.
The Starch Manufacturers Association (NISAD), which contributes to domestic and foreign trade by processing the maize produced by our country’s farmers in these lands and producing value-added products, carries out various works in order to contribute more to the Turkish economy in these difficult times. NISAD, which is ready to produce more within the bounds of possibility offered by the legislation in order to avoid supply shortages in food products, played an important role in increasing the maize production from 2 million tons to 6 million tons with the support it provides to the farmers.
For Starch Industry, which processes 25% of approximately 6 million tons of maize produced by around 210 thousand farmers annually in Turkey and is the buyer of the first harvested product, maize is a product that has no other alternative.
Starch Industry, which contributes both directly and indirectly to the country’s economy in a wide range, from maize production to the production of basic inputs required by the food and beverage industry, has the potential to produce health-related by-products in these difficult times and makes the necessary effort to support the health sector.
New Cooperation for the Future of Turkey
Chairman İsmail Başaran, on behalf of NISAD, who has been cooperating with Turkey’s largest farmer family Agricultural Credit Cooperatives of Turkey, which has adopted the principle of contributing to their production by meeting all kinds of needs of Turkish farmers, and aims to serve the Turkish agriculture and economy, said, “As NISAD, we always stand by and support our maize producers. Thanks to this cooperation, we become a stakeholder of Turkey’s largest farmer family in order to be able to further support the maize producers. By taking the organizational power of the Agricultural Credit Cooperatives spread throughout our country, we want to support maize producers more, to meet the starch-based needs of the food industry with domestic production and to increase the exports of the sector. In this regard, I would like to state that we are honored and happy to cooperate with Agricultural Credit Cooperatives of Turkey, which have adopted the principle of contributing to their production by meeting all kinds of needs of Turkish farmers and aiming to serve the Turkish agriculture and economy.
General Manager of Agricultural Credit Cooperatives of Turkey Dr. Fahrettin Poyraz emphasized that agricultural production consists of a chain of values that starts from the seed and extends to the table, saying that steps should be taken to strengthen and protect this chain of values. Poyraz said, “I think this project will constitute an important example in terms of the effects of problems faced by Turkish agriculture on the industry from the past to present, for the resolution of your problems and the problems of Turkish economy in general. We want to be a bridge between the market, that is, industry and producers. If we can do that, we will see many opportunities for cooperation emerge in later stages. Therefore, I think that the signatures we will append here are of great importance for the system besides their symbolic value. So to speak; sugar is here, flour is here, water is here, so as chefs we will create a good union just to make halva.”
The cooperation and goodwill protocol signed between Agricultural Credit Cooperatives of Turkey and NISAD will be valid until March 31, 2021.