Industrial Maize as a Commodity System: Spatial Scale and Relations of Production in Turkey's Agriculture After Economic Restructuring

During the decade of 2000-2010, industrial maize production in Turkey doubled to approximately four million tons and the area under maize cultivation increased by ten per cent. Concomitant with the increase in total output, private agri-food industry came to control 90 per cent of total production by 2010. Using exploratory spatial analysis and spatial regression methods, we are able to have a more detailed and spatially explicit regional study of a commodity system across Turkey. We argue that maize production in Turkey developed in the 2000s along the tenets of a corporate food regime according to demands by agri-food firms. However, small-scale farmers are not fully excluded from corporate relations of production, and low-yield traditional maize farming persists in some provinces as an important field crop for household consumption.