Hürriyet Newspaper columnist Elif Ergü wrote about the achievements of Tabit Smart Agriculture Technologies Co-founder Tülin Akın in her Inspiring Women column.
Tülin Akın, entrepreneur and founder of TABİT, who established Turkey’s first ‘smart village’: “If farmers say ‘There is a pandemic’ and do not plant or spray their fields now, they will lose their crops. Our problem will be even bigger. We must take precautions and continue agriculture.”
Tülin Akın is one of the entrepreneurial and brave women who has dedicated herself to raising awareness in Turkey’s agriculture. She is a woman entrepreneur who set out saying, “It cannot be done without agricultural development.” In 2004, she founded tarımsalpazarlama.org. She taught farmers about the internet, provided online training, and marketed their products. She visited 12,000 villages one by one. She implemented many new projects for farmers; from modeling special credit cards for farmers with banks to applications created with telecommunication companies. Tülin Akın’s work and projects have made an impact not only in Turkey but also in the world. She received award after award. Two years ago, she received the Schwab Foundation’s World’s Best Social Entrepreneur Award at the World Economic Forum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Goalkeepers Award. Tülin Akın, one of the Sabancı Foundation’s “Changemakers” and a winner of KAGİDER’s competition, continues to produce exemplary projects without slowing down.
We Must Take Urgent Measures
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced last week that urgent measures must be taken to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic, which has enveloped the whole world including our country, from triggering a food crisis. On this occasion, we discussed agriculture in Turkey during the corona days with Tülin Akın, who established a smart village in Aydın. Akın’s first sentence, which she emphasized, was, “In these difficult days, farmers should be supported as much as healthcare workers,” and she continued:
“If the corona pandemic hinders our agricultural activities, a risk at least as big as the pandemic awaits us. For now, officials say we have stocks for a short-term pandemic period. However, agricultural production is seasonal. It is unlike any other production. For example, in an automotive or textile company, you can take a break for a while and then easily pick up where you left off, but things are not like that in agriculture. These days, for example, there is a risk of rust disease in wheat. If you say ‘There is a pandemic’ and do not go to your fields and spray, you can lose your product. In that case, you need to take the precautions and quickly run to your field. If you cannot plant the seedlings that you need to put in the soil, it is not possible to do this process fifteen days later in agriculture. Everything has to be in harmony. Right on time, that is. You also cannot say to your cows, ‘I can’t milk you this week, wait.’ In fact, if the farmer cannot produce, they will of course lose their income. But they have more opportunities than the person in the city to continue their life. Farmers are going to their fields thinking that our people should not go hungry, and they are trying not to disrupt production. If agricultural production is disrupted, it will be very difficult to heal the wounds. Agriculture is not like any industry; it is very difficult to both start and stop. That is why we must protect our farmers and be more sensitive to their needs than ever before.”
The Village Managed in the Virtual World
It is a smart village on a 300-decare application area in the Kasaplar village of Aydın’s Koçarlı District. A village where techniques and technologies for field and garden farming, greenhouse cultivation, beekeeping, and animal husbandry can all be managed together from a mobile phone. Precautions against COVID-19 have been taken at the Vodafone smart village technology-supported agricultural research farm, established by TABİT, and production continues. Since the village is equipped with new technologies, remote irrigation is carried out, and the fields are monitored. Control is also provided remotely with digital insect traps.
A Solution Must BeFound for Seasonal Workers
One of the most important problems in agriculture is the situation of temporary agricultural workers. The housing problems of seasonal workers who work in the fields during planting times are not at all suitable for pandemic conditions. Akın makes the following suggestion on this matter: “We need to solve this urgently and create shelters where the necessary health precautions have been taken. We have made suggestions on this matter by meeting with the local governments we are in contact with. In this period of the pandemic, we are trying to meet every kind of information need of the farmer for production in the most sensitive way.”
We Are Moving to a New World Order
Tülin Akın, who also touched on the importance of Turkey making plans to be a self-sufficient country in agriculture as in the past, is reaching and informing 1.6 million farmers with smart applications in the virtual environment during this period. Arguing that we will move to a new world order with the coronavirus pandemic, Akın speaks as follows: “We will realize how important food and its raw material, agriculture, are. Also, those who have not realized the importance of our water resources will do so. Knowing that people can endure hunger for a maximum of 20 days and thirst for 6 days, we must take measures to meet agricultural production and all kinds of needs of our farmers, the most important element of agricultural production. From now on, the development level of countries will be determined by whether they are self-sufficient in food. We need to support our farmers as much as possible.”