Buckling under ageing and climate crisis: Migration flows in Turkish agriculture
| Published date | 01 December 2023 |
| Author | Zafer Yenal |
| Date | 01 December 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.13205 |
International Migration. 2023;61:349–353.
|
349
wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/imig
Received: 15 Oc tober 2023
|
Accepted: 16 Octob er 2023
DOI: 10 .1111/imig .13205
COMMENTARY
Buckling under ageing and climate crisis: Migration
flows in Turkish agriculture
Zafer Yenal
Boğaziçi Uni versity – Sociolo gy, Istanbul, Turkey
Correspondence
Zafer Yenal, Boğa ziçi University – S ociology, Istanb ul, Turkey.
Email: zyenal@boun.edu.tr
A perfect storm is brewin g for Turkish agricult ure. Faced with the changing demographic str ucture and the rapidly
deterioratin g conditions of clima te change the whole country may face food s ecurity cr isis in the near future.
Migration-rel ated issues complicate the p roblem even further.
The age pyramid i n Turkey has changed shape significantly, evolving from a pyrami d to a slightly defor med
quadrangula r form in the past several d ecades (TUIK, 2023). The m edian age has risen from 22 in 1990 to 32 .7 in
2020. The ratio of the elderly population (aged over 65) has risen from 6.7 per cent in 2000 to 9.5 per cent in 2020.
All these chan ges reflect the gradu al ageing of the Turkish populat ion and growing share of old-age g roups in the
country. Even though the ag eing speed is lower than in many other count ries across the world, it is still sig nificant
for Turkish societ y which has thus fa r heavily relied on t he economic advant ages that were gleane d from the ex-
panding ranks of younger population for many decades. Similar to other cases, fertility rates have been declining
while the elder ly dependency rati o is increasing (Ministr y of Family and Social Servi ces (MFSS), 2020).
The problem of ageing is especially grave in rural areas where according to recent estimates, the average age
of farmers in Turkey is 58.1 (57.7 for men and 60.1 for women; Hur riyet Daily News, 2023). 64.7 per cent of the
elderly populat ion works in the agricultural sector (MFSS, 2020). Anyone visiting a random pro ducer market in any
part of the country would readily observe the dominance of elderly villagers who have come to sell their products.
Growing feelin gs of economic insecurit y and increasing concerns fo r future prospects of vi llage life have con-
tributed to t he exodus of the young er generations from the rural areas. T he neoliberal tr ansformation of Turkish
agriculture after the 1980s, characterised by the increasing volatility of agricultural markets, inconsistencies in
farm support policies and the reconfigu ration of rural space with more non-farm uses of land , led to fur ther
depeasantis ation and ma de agricultural ly oriented l ifestyles es pecially unattr active for young people (Keyder &
Yena l, 2011 ).
These serious dem ographic chan ges have t heir most devastating toll on agricultural production for severa l
reasons. Firs t of all, reliance on labour as a f actor of production in f arming is higher than mos t other sectors. One
of the defining charac teristics of Turkish agriculture is long consid ered to be low productivit y mostly s temming
from the limit ed applic ation of technology (TÜSİAD, 2020). The contin uing impor tance of manual labour and
drudgery especially in more labour-intensive phases of agricultural production (such as hoeing, weeding and har-
vesting) create impor tant constraints and challe nges for the sustainability of agricultu ral production. For example,
© 2023 Internati onal Organizati on for Migration.
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