Abandonment of Agricultural Lands, Reasons and Sustainability: Evidence from Turkey

The land is one of the key factors of production for the agriculture sector, which provides food and shelter to the people. Land abandonment leads to decreased farm diversity, low production, and underutilization, as well as threatening the cultural heritage. Land abandonment has reached 41.06% in the region in the last two decades. Thereby, this study focuses on exploring the abandonment reasons of agricultural lands, which is one of the main production factors. The study was performed in the Yozgat province of Turkey. A well-structured questionnaire was used to collect the data from 181 farms through stratified random sampling. Questionnaires consisted of both open-ended and closed-ended questions. The research results showed that the principal causes of land abandonment in the region were low profit reaped from field crop cultivation and farms' weak administrative profiles. The majority of the farmers had not done soil analysis but were using cropping systems. In the study, in addition, it was tested statistically if producers’ administrative competencies differed among the strata and so it was determined there were no significant differences among the strata. To effectively mitigate the negative effects of land abandonment, the government should improve production conditions, improve agricultural yields, and strengthen food and agricultural product promotion and guidance.