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Purpose -The concept of food safety systems is increasing worldwide among farmers, manufactures, and processors and is also affecting consumer perspectives. This trend primarily impacts food businesses and table olive processing firms. The study seeks to explore the major economic obstacles to the adoption of food safety systems in table olive processing firms. Design/methodology/approach -All 59 table olive businesses in the Aydın Province of Turkey were included in the survey. In an effort to remove extraneous items and demonstrate internal consistency, Cronbach's alpha was calculated for each variable. To better specify the economic obstacles to food safety system implementation, data were examined with exploratory factor analysis using principal component extraction and varimax rotation. Findings -Major economic obstacles that most prominently emerged from analyses may explain several key indicators including difficulties in employing well-trained personnel required for food safety systems, insufficient training facilities for employees intended to aid in the implementation of food safety systems, deficiency of infrastructure and other physical conditions, and deficient financial support from government and non-government organizations.Research limitations/implications -The study investigated only table olive processors. Future research should include analyses of consumer behaviors. Practical implications -The Turkish government must ensure implementation of food safety systems to increase public knowledge and accelerate government funds for the establishment of such systems in the food business industry. Originality/value -The study contributes to the positive perceptions of managers and their behaviors towards implementation of food safety systems in table olive processing firms. Since the paper is one of only a few dealing with this topic, it provides key clues for dissemination of food safety systems adoption at the firm level.

Organic broiler chicken production has recently received more attention worldwide. This study carried out an economic analysis to compare the profitability of organic versus conventional growing systems per unit of broiler meat production. In this study, 400 slow-growing broilers (Hubbard Red-JA) were reared in an organic production system and the same number of fast-growing broilers (Ross-308) were reared in a conventional system. Profitability was deduced from an economic analysis that compared total costs and net income. Results showed that organic broiler meat can cost from 70% to 86% more with respect to variable and fixed costs when compared with conventional production. The main reasons for the higher cost of organic broiler meat were feed, labor, certification, and outdoor area maintenance. The proportion of fixed costs in total costs was 1.54% in the conventional system and 7.48% in the organic system. The net income per kg of chicken meat in the organic system was €0.75, which is 180% higher compared with the conventional system (€0.27); however, organic broiler meat was sold at a twice as high price than the conventional one. In conclusion, organic broiler meat production was more economical than conventional rearing.

The determination of technical efficiency for cotton farms can be invaluable in estimating optimum farming practices and in identifying strategic options for the industry. This paper investigates the productive efficiency of a sample of farmers in Turkey's Aegean region by estimating a stochastic frontier production function (SFA), constant returns to scale (CRS) and variable returns to scale (VRS) using output-oriented data envelopment analysis (DEA). Data were obtained from 198 cotton farms using structured questionnaire interviews. The estimates of technical efficiency based on these two frontier methods were compared. While efficiency scores for cotton farms differed between the SFA and the DEA models, the mean efficiency scores are quite low for the CRS DEA model compared with the VRS DEA and SFA approaches. The mean efficiency measure (0.91) obtained from the stochastic frontier was higher than that calculated from the VRS DEA (0.77) and CRS DEA (0.25). This study suggests that more efficient political instruments need to be adopted to review current subsidies because of increasing outlays for diesel oil used in cotton farming.

Recently, organic broiler chicken production has received more attention worldwide. This study has carried out an economic analysis to compare the profitability of organic versus conventional growing systems per unit of broiler meat production. To achieve this goal, 400 slow-growing broiler chickens (Hubbard Red-JA) were reared in an organic production system, and the same number of fast-growing birds (Ross-308) in a conventional system. The profitability was deduced with an economic analysis that compared total costs and net income. Results showed that organic broiler meat can cost from 70% to 86% more with respect to variable and fixed costs when compared with conventional production. The main reasons for the higher cost of organic broiler meat were feed, labor, certification, and outdoor area maintenance. The proportion of fixed costs in total costs was 1.54% in the conventional system and 7.48% in the organic system. The net income per kg of chicken meat in the organic system was € 0.75, which is 180% higher than chicken meat grown in a conventional system (€ 0.27); however, the price of organic broiler meat sold in the present study was twice as high as that obtained for conventional broilers. In conclusion, organic broiler meat production was more profitable than conventional rearing.

The common fig (Ficus carica L.) is a tree species and is one of the oldest fruit trees cultivated in Turkey. The Western Anatolian region of Turkey produces nearly a quarter of the total dried fig production of the world. This region also harbours a rich fig germplasm. However, so far this germplasm has remained largely uncharacterised. In this study, using 14 simple sequence repeat (SSR) primer pairs, we analysed a total of 310 fig accessions from six different regions of Anatolia. In structure analyses, Western Anatolian accessions formed a group, which was correlated with their geographical distribution. In addition, 7 identical, 36 synonymous, and 22 homonymous fig accessions were identified. In multilocus lineages (MLLs) analysis a total of 54 accessions were matched to different accessions as clone assignment. The results will facilitate future germplasm management and breeding efforts in this economically important tree species by identifying genetic diversity, genetic relations and characterising the structure of studied populations and accessions.

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This paper provides an overview of some of the land ownership consolidation programmes that have been attempted in a number of countries, and examines in more detail the present situation in Turkey. Much of the rural land in Turkey is fragmented, and the structural problems created by co-ownership of small properties will probably influence the viability of future farming in the country. This paper identifies the attitudes of co-owner farmers to the disposal of their own share to one of their heirs when that share's value is paid at the current market value of the land. Ninety farmers who owned their landholdings were interviewed. Answers to the survey questions were analysed with a logit model, and the maximum likelihood method was employed to estimate the model. The results indicate that a farmer's level of education and acceptance of the trend towards the disposal of an owned shared parcel to a third person are positively related to the likelihood that the farmer will choose to pass on the shared parcel of land to an heir. This is true provided that the share value the farmer is likely to recover is the current market value of the land.