Turkish Ministry of Agriculture incentivizes rapeseed production in order to battle the price increase in sunflower oil prices

The sunflower oil price in Turkey keeps increasing to the detriment of the consumer as the prices have reached USD 8.8 for 5 kg bottles. The Ministry of Agriculture is trying to encourage rapeseed production and develop rapeseed oil as an alternative to sunflower oil in the domestic market. To prevent a high amount of imports, the Ministry guides the farmers to plant rapeseed which requires less water in production and produces 20% more oil than sunflower seeds. Turkey needs to produce approximately 3,000 KMT of sunflowers annually to fulfill the domestic market demand. However, the country only has 1,900 KMT of sunflowers annually.