Özkan KAYACAN, General Director of Agricultural Research and Policies, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Suat YILMAZ, Deputy General Director of Crop Production, Fahrettin AY, Head of Nursery and Seed Affairs Department of General Directorate of Forestry, Chairman and members of the Board of Directors of TÜRKTOB and Sub-Unions and other invited guests attended the meeting.
Chairman of the Board of Directors of Turkey Seed Union (TÜRKTOB) and the Economic Cooperation Organization Seed Association (ECOSA) Savaş AKCAN pointed out the following topics during the opening speech;
- Our union our sub-union has added to the strength of the private sector since and the day they set up. With the support of you and our members, our unions have turned into institutions that represent our sector in the most effective way, trying to solve the problems of its members and have completed their infrastructure to a great extent.
- Our Union and Sub-Unions have been a bridge between public institutions and our sector.
- Our Sub-Unions try to solve all problems in their fields. They are doing the duties given to them by the Seed Law, and works with the power of his members.
- We focus on making efforts to correct the wrong information and to inform the public that we are a very important sector in agricultural production among our other duties.
- The success of our Sub-Unions strengthens our hands. I thank all our Unions.
- Our basic philosophy is to form a whole together with our Sub-Unions. We are very powerfull with 53,500 members. I ask that each of our Sub-Units feel this power behind.
-We work in cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and other institutions to solve the problems of each of our sub-sectors.
- In the new term, TURKTOB started a training campaign and provided professional training to our members and staff on 10 different topics.
- We have started training programs by signing a protocol with the Ministry of National Education in order to train qualified labor force needed by our sector.
- In the new period, we took over the management of the Seed Association of Economic Cooperation Countries (ECOSA) together with our Sub-Unions and started to work. In this context, ECOS 7th Regional Congress of Trade was held in Turkey and Turkey-Uzbekistan Business Forum was organized in Uzbekistan. We have come a long way in the search for a new market.
In order to increase our representation in the media, we continued to conduct new projects and realize special projects. We shared sectoral developments with the public with more than 60 television programs, more than 1000 newspaper news, and more than 10 thousand internet news and tried to correct the misperceptions on us.
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Özkan KAYACAN, General Director of Agricultural Research and Policies of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, briefly said that; If your variety is good quality, your seed and success will be good. We have no choice but to develop our own varieties. We are working to make the sector to develope new varieties and compete in the market. It is our responsibility to develop new varieties that can compete with our competitors around the world. There are 100-150 years old companies in the world and they are very strong economically. In order to compete with this structure, we need to develop new arguments that bring together the public and private sectors. Together we must create new visions. I would like to thank TURKTOB and the sector for the ECOSA initiative. We cooperate in R & D with all countries, especially ECOSA member countries. We will first enter these countries with R & D and then with seeds. ’’
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In accordance with the agenda, the 12th Ordinary General Assembly Meeting of TURKTOB ended with discussion of the activity report, financial report, audit report, new budget proposal and release them seperately.