The World and Türkiye in 2025

Aydın Tiryaki (December 31, 2025)
(Gemini AI was used as a data compilation and writing assistant)

Abstract: The year 2025 has been the year when global food systems faced their toughest test under climate change and economic pressures. This article analyzes the cost increases in agricultural production, the livestock crisis in Türkiye, food nationalism, and the structural barriers to consumer access to safe food.

Introduction: The Strategic Issue on Our Plate

As we bid farewell to 2025, food is no longer just a matter of agriculture but has become one of the most sensitive points of national security. The uncertainties created by the climate crisis and the increase in energy costs have transformed produce from the field into a luxury consumption item by the time it reaches the market stall. 2025 has been recorded as a year when “food sovereignty” rather than food abundance was discussed worldwide.

1. Global Agriculture: Climate Crisis and Food Nationalism

In 2025, world agriculture was shaken by yield losses caused by extreme weather events:

• Production Losses: Extreme drought in the Mediterranean basin and unexpected floods in Asia led to a global supply crisis in many staple foods, from olive oil to rice.
• Export Restrictions: Many countries imposed bans on the export of agricultural products to protect their own domestic markets, initiating a trend of “food nationalism.” This turned 2025 into a year of famine risk for food-dependent nations.

2. Agriculture in Türkiye: The Withdrawal of Farmers from Production

For Türkiye, 2025 has been a year of serious questions regarding the sustainability of agricultural production:

• The Cost Spiral: The inability to fully reflect the increases in fertilizer, diesel, and pesticide prices in product prices has dragged farmers into a debt trap. 2025 data shows that the average age of the farming population is rising, and the youth are completely disconnecting from the land.
• Lack of Planning: The failure to implement realistic planning regarding which products to plant in which basins has failed to break the cycle that leads to importing the same product a year after a period of abundance.

3. The Bottleneck in Livestock: Imports or Production?

In 2025, the livestock sector in Türkiye experienced one of the deepest crises in its history:

• Feed Dependency: Continued foreign dependency on feed raw materials has pushed meat and milk costs to levels unreachable for the consumer. The slaughtering of animals by small family enterprises due to high costs has created a risk of domestic production reaching a breaking point in the medium and long term.
• The Import Deadlock: Intensive livestock imports conducted to balance red meat prices in 2025 have weakened the competitiveness of domestic producers rather than producing a permanent solution.

4. Food Safety and Health Risks

As a result of the economic depression, food safety became a serious public health issue in 2025:

• Imitation and Adulteration: Exorbitant prices for basic foodstuffs have increased the market share of fake and low-quality foods. Inspection reports published throughout 2025 revealed the extent of “food terrorism,” ranging from fraudulent olive oil to meat products mixed with foreign substances.
• Ineffective Oversight: The fact that inspections remained limited to issuing fines and that deterrence was low proved insufficient to prevent fraudulent production.

Conclusion

The data for 2025 has proven that agriculture and livestock are too critical to be left to “free market” conditions alone. The future projection for 2026 suggests that pressure on food prices will continue, and dependency on imports will increase unless radical support is provided to keep producers on the land. The vision for Türkiye in 2026 necessitates a “producer-oriented” agricultural revolution that uses water efficiently, reduces input costs, and breaks the middleman chain.

APPENDIX: AGRICULTURE, FOOD SECURITY, AND LIVESTOCK – A CURRENT PERSPECTIVE

The upheavals experienced in the global food system throughout 2025 have confirmed that agriculture is no longer just a production activity but a “national defense line.” While investments in regenerative agriculture and soil health are increasing worldwide, sudden yield losses caused by the climate crisis have turned food trade into an overt diplomatic weapon. As we enter 2026, the fundamental issue is not just access to food, but the nutritional value and sustainability of the food that is accessed. Although the production of “low carbon footprint” food is encouraged globally, high costs make these products a dream for low-income masses.

In the specific case of Türkiye, this picture manifests in a production environment where structural crises have become chronic. The fact that water stress is no longer a future scenario but a reality directly hitting crops in the field necessitates that Türkiye rapidly abandon traditional farming methods and transition to data-driven precision agriculture models. However, for producers who lack the capacity to invest in technology and are economically cornered, this transformation is quite painful. The inability to stop migration from villages to cities and the fact that the average agricultural age has reached a dangerous threshold carries the risk of making “import dependency” an inevitable necessity rather than a choice in the coming years.

On the livestock side, any intervention made without developing a sustainable feed strategy continues to deplete the capital of domestic producers. The data for 2025 has shown that uncontrolled imports, carried out solely to suppress prices, destroy domestic livestock farming in the medium term and turn Türkiye into a marketplace for global monopolies. The 2026 vision requires a radical protectionism and social consensus that does not just protect the consumer, but regards the producer—who maintains the land and the livestock—as the country’s “reason for being.”

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A Note on Methods and Tools: All observations, ideas, and solution proposals in this study are the author’s own. AI was utilized as an information source for researching and compiling relevant topics strictly based on the author’s inquiries, requests, and directions; additionally, it provided writing assistance during the drafting process. (The research-based compilation and English writing process of this text were supported by AI as a specialized assistant.)