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🇹🇷 Turkey /Economy & Trade

Onion harvest begins in Polatlı Plain as planted area falls from 75,000 to 25,000 decares

From Cumhuriyet · () Turkish

Translated from Turkish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources Context piece
  • Onion harvesting has begun in Temelli, in Ankara’s Polatlı district, where about 300 seasonal workers are working across roughly 2,000 decares.
  • Yields are expected to reach 5 to 7 tons per decare, with onions sorted by size for markets, restaurants and cooking.
  • Workers’ representative Hakim Türe said the harvest can process about 200 tons a day and called for better living conditions and support for producers.

Before the sun is fully up, seasonal workers in Temelli head into the fields to begin the onion harvest. They spend the day pulling onions from the soil, cutting away the stalks and filling the crop into sacks under the hot sun.

We wake up at five in the morning, come to the field, and stay there until eight in the evening.

· Hakim TüreThe workers’ foreman describes the long daily schedule during the onion harvest.

The work covers about 2,000 decares and involves roughly 300 workers. Once filled, the sacks are loaded onto trucks and sent either to market or to storage. The onions are sorted into three sizes: the largest, known as “takoz,” goes to supermarkets; medium-sized onions go to restaurants; and the smallest are sold in markets for cooking.

Hakim Türe, the workers’ foreman who acts as a link between the laborers and employers, said the crews begin their day at 5 a.m. and remain in the fields until about 8 p.m. Their tasks include cultivation, digging up the onions, cutting the stalks, bagging the produce and loading it onto trucks. Türe said the harvest is expected to finish around Oct. 15, although rainfall could change the schedule.

We are responsible for cultivating, digging up, cutting and bagging the onions.

· Hakim TüreHe outlines the manual tasks carried out by the seasonal workers.

The operation can bag and deliver about 200 tons of onions a day, Türe said. He stressed that onion production depends heavily on manual labor, unlike crops such as corn, squash and sunflower, which can be handled by machines. He expects yields in the area to range from 5 to 7 tons per decare, with favorable weather producing a better harvest than last year.

We can put about 200 tons of onions into sacks and deliver them each day.

· Hakim TüreHe gives the operation’s reported daily processing capacity.

Türe said the workers live in tents and rely on outside supplies for electricity and water. He urged improvements to their living conditions and support for onion producers, warning that growers could abandon onion planting if they suffer losses. He put the daily income of a five-person family working there at between 7,000 and 10,000 lira, depending on how much they work.

Yields in this area range from 5 to 7 tons.

· Hakim TüreHe describes the expected onion yield in the region.
About this summary

Originally published by Cumhuriyet in Turkish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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