Small‐Scale Village Farmers, Farming Imaginaries and Enrichment Value Creation in Ankara, Turkey

ABSTRACT How are we to understand the continuing importance of small‐scale village farming in a country like Turkey, which is undergoing an expanding process of industrialization and commodification in agriculture? There are two sides to this question: One concerns land use reconfiguration for commercial purposes, contraction of small‐scale farmland and village resources and depeasantization and deagrarianization tendencies; the other relates to the absence of significant grassroots‐based agroecological movements for reorganizing agriculture. Using official documents, statistics, ethnographic data and in‐depth interviews, the paper examines this question through the empirical illustration of the small town of Güdül (Ankara, Turkey). It shows that farmers uphold their presence and create an enrichment value for their labour and food collaboratively with consumers within fluid, trust‐based everyday social networks. Invocated by farmers' farming imaginaries, enrichment value creation comprises their assessments and evaluative judgements of capitalist expansion into local village farming within the state‐led developmentalist fold.