Socio-Demographic and Production Structures of Pomegranate Producing Enterprises In Hatay Province

Abstract

The aim of this study is to reveal the socio-demographic status of pomegranate fruit producers, pomegranateproduction, the determination of the problems experienced during production and solution proposals in the Hatayprovince. Hatay province meets 4.25% of Turkey's total pomegranate production in 2019. Data were collected throughface-to-face interviews with the total 63 pomegranate producers. The “Simple Random Sampling Method” was used todetermine the producers. It has been observed that the fruit planting area has increased by 33% in the Hatay provincesince 2005. The yield increased by 48% and the production amount increased by 4.96 times of Hatay province between2005 and 2019 years. The enterprises were divided into three different groups according to their size. It was observedthat the 22.20% of farmers were female and 77.80% were male. The 95.2% of producers were between 15 and 64 ages,and 4.8% of them were 65 and over. The average number of family members in the enterprises was determined as 4.68person. The average experience duration of farmers was 19.21 years. The eleven farmers were university graduates andthree farmers were college graduates. 39,68 % of farmers are secondary and high school graduates. In the research, itwas determined that the producers found the input prices high and the selling prices low in pomegranate production.The results revealed that if pomegranate production is supported by the state, lower cost, reasonable selling price,sufficient knowledge of the producers, procurement of seedlings of reasonable quality and price, pomegranateproduction amount may become more widespread and the increase interest of the production in the coming years inHatay province which has suitable geographical location and is a gastronomy city.