Impact Assessment of an Integrated Dairy Farming Pr oject in Turkey Financed by Europe Funds

Abstract

Correction of wrong practices or thoughts by the pr oducer or the adoption of a new production technique shows the success of rural dev elopment studies. This study was conducted to assess the effect of Integrated Dairy Farming Project on the Çakmak and Ekinciler villages before and after implementing th e European funded “Integrated Dairy Cattle Project” carried out by the Diyarbakır Comme rcial Exchange in southeastern Anatolia region of Turkey, in 2006. Project village s have enough arable lands and dry farming is performed. The number of cattle is incre asing compared to the other villages in the province. In order to make a comparison between the years, three surveys were conducted in 2006, 2007, and 2009 by using question naires. The findings of the research show that a considerable portion of the respondents (37%) stated that they did not trust the analysis of this kind of project that had not t aken into consideration the rural needs. While 54.4% of the farmers wanted to sell their milk to cooperatives in 2007, the same farmers in 2009 stated that they would not sell to cooperatives. In addition, 47.8% of the farmers trusted and benefitted from Europe (EU) pro ject training programmes in 2007, while selling rate decreased to 35.6% in 2009. Furt hermore, 30% of the participants mentioned that they could not trust the project sta ff since the project duration was short. Because of the reasons mentioned, participation in the project was realized at low level. Keywords: Dairy farming, European funded projects, Project p articipation, Rural development, Rural sociology.