Dispossession or Sustained Exploitation? The Case of Credit Expansion in Turkish Agriculture

• In Event: 508 - Section on Marxist Sociology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. Globalization and Economics

Abstract

The 1980s policies of economic restructuring in Turkey gave way to the phase-out of state intervention via price support and public procurement for major crops. While the protectionist policies in agriculture contributing to the welfare of rural communities were cast aside, successive politicians in government implemented new policies tailored to the needs of private agrifood corporations; especially within the framework of World Bank projects after the 2001 Turkish financial crisis. As the role of private agrifood industries became substantial in agrifood retailing and processing, the share of agriculture in total employment fell from 38 percent to 25 percent between 2001 and 2008, equivalent to a loss of three million jobs, from eight million to five million. However, the number of agricultural jobs saw a modest increase in between 2008 and 2010 by one million, accompanied by an significant increase in agricultural production credits. I use annual data at provincial and regional levels on Turkish agriculture and credit markets between 2007 and 2010 in multilevel regression models. By analyzing different factors combined with the potential of dispossession due to credit use, I conclude that dispossession is only one potential consequence of financialization under certain circumstances. Another important potential consequence, that is largely neglected in financialization literature, is the sustained exploitation of small- and medium-scale producers. As these socioeconomically subordinate groups depend on credits to participate in restructured markets, their dependency is exploited by corporate firms.

Author

• Yetkin Borlu, Pennsylvania State University