{"id":10031,"date":"2022-08-30T12:47:20","date_gmt":"2022-08-30T11:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mesopotamia.coop\/?p=10031"},"modified":"2022-08-30T12:48:54","modified_gmt":"2022-08-30T11:48:54","slug":"women-working-in-hevsel-gardens-we-need-a-farmers-market-to-sell-our-vegetables","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mesopotamia.coop\/women-working-in-hevsel-gardens-we-need-a-farmers-market-to-sell-our-vegetables\/","title":{"rendered":"Women working in Hevsel Gardens: We need a farmers\u2019 market to sell our vegetables"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Z\u00fcleyhan Sezgin is a farmer working in the Hevsel Gardens. \u201cOur incomes don\u2019t meet our expenses due to the increasing price hikes. We could plant vegetables only in a field because we couldn\u2019t buy fertilizer,\u201d she says.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The recent increasing price for diesel fuel and fertilizer has also reduced the production in agriculture in Turkey. As the weather is getting warmer, women farmers working in the Hevsel Gardens<\/a>, which were added to the UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2015, have already begun to plant vegetables; however, most of the fields in the gardens are left unplanted due to the high prices of diesel fuel and fertilizer. The women<\/a>, who mostly plant vegetables such as lettuce, leek, onion, and leafy green vegetables, want a women\u2019s market to be opened in the district of Sur [in Amed<\/a>] in order to sell their vegetables at a cheap price.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They begin to work early morning<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Z\u00fcleyhan Sezgin, who starts to plant the seeds after hoeing and raking her field early morning, works with her children in the field until the evening. She told us that they sell the vegetables and take some of them to home to eat. This year, they plant leek and leafy green vegetables only for themselves because they cannot sell vegetables as before. They begin to work in the gardens in the spring and end working in autumn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur fields remain unplanted due to high prices of fertilizer\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Z\u00fcleyhan Sergin and her family plant only one of their fields this year because they couldn\u2019t buy fertilizer due to its high prices. Stating that their incomes don\u2019t meet their expenses, she said, \u201cI don\u2019t work only in the field; I also look after my children and bring them to the field. If I had my own field, I wouldn\u2019t plant anything because our incomes really don\u2019t meet our expenses. We are doing very hard work, but we don\u2019t receive recompense for our work. Everything is very expensive, the diesel fuel and fertilizer are very expensive. We cannot employ workers because we cannot pay them. The government should give us fertilizer to us or they should support us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe want a women\u2019s market to be opened\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Z\u00fcleyhan Sezgin stated that as women farmers, they asked the municipality to open a women\u2019s market in the district of Sur, \u201cBut nothing has been done until now. If there was a women’s market in Sur, we would still sell our vegetables. But now we sell them to sellers. \u00a0They buy vegetables at a very cheap price from us but sell very expensive. Many women work in the Hevsel Gardens and we, as women farmers, want to have a women\u2019s market to sell our products.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following video unfortunately does not contain English subtitles.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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