Yıldız Holding Women's Platform, an initiative aiming to empower women in business life and all areas of society, has undersigned an important project supporting contracted female farmers. Under the leadership of Yıldız Holding Women's Platform and with the support of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Female Stars of Agriculture project will provide contracted women farmers for Kerevitaş's Superfresh brand with a purchase guarantee of 5 thousand tons of fresh fruit and vegetables until 2025, and a value of 35 million TRY will be created. In the project, an incentive of 500 thousand TRY will also be provided to women farmers by Yıldız Holding Women's Platform.

Speaking at the introductory meeting of the project, Yıldız Holding Chairman Ali Ülker stated that they will support the economic and social empowerment of women with the “Female Stars of Agriculture” project. Ali Ülker said, “We work to empower women economically and socially, and we cooperate effectively with our stakeholders. While establishing our platform, we aimed to accelerate equal opportunity-based practices not only for Yıldız Holding employees but also for thousands of women in our supply chain. With this approach, we are implementing an important project where we will directly purchase products from contracted female farmers with Superfresh, one of the largest suppliers of agricultural raw materials in Turkey. With this project, which we announced with the support of our Ministry, we pressed the button to strongly increase the proportion of women in our supply infrastructure. With this project, which will provide assurance and financing to women farmers in Superfresh's supply chain, we will increase our female farmer ratio by 100 percent in the next three years. We aim to create a value of 35 million TRY by giving direct product purchase guarantee to contracted female farmers for 3 years”.

POSITIVE DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WOMEN AND YOUTH

Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Vahit Kirişci said that the project will set an important example for the business world in order to encourage local suppliers and especially women farmers, and said. “Projects for rural development are also at the center of many studies carried out for the development of our country. For this reason, as the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, we attach great importance to the projects implemented to support rural women. We are also happy that this work has started within Yıldız Holding, which is a pioneer in the food industry in Turkey. It is our greatest wish to increase the number of projects that will contribute to rural development," he said.   

Kirişci pointed out that returning to the countryside should be put at the center of the country's development in every sense and added: “At the Ministry, this work has started within the body of a corporate structure like Yıldız Holding, which has pioneered the industry of this country, especially in the food sector, in the food industry. We happily follow and support that it will be developed, and we want such studies to increase. At the Ministry, we give additional points if there are women in the project, and we do the same for youth. We give additional points for the return of young people to the countryside. We will continue to support this issue."

IMPORTS UNDER IPR BROUGHT IN MORE THAN 800 MILLION DOLLARS

Kirişci pointed out that the idea that nothing is produced in the country is unfounded. "The claim that nothing is produced in this country or this country does not produce, it rather imports everything is fuss and baseless. Yes, we import wheat, but we are trying to produce biscuits like Ülker, which imports this wheat. Or we import to produce bulgur, flour, and pasta and export them. Imports made by our companies that we allow to import under the name of Inward Processing Regime (DIR). An additional contribution of 800 million dollars remained in our country due to the excess of our exports corresponding to the ones we imported under the name of Inward Processing in 2021," he said.