Praise and Support from Minister Vahit Kirişçi for MAKÜ's Project

Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Vahit Kirişçi met with sector representatives at the MAKÜ Conference Hall during his visit to Burdur. The meeting, which was attended by representatives of the agriculture and livestock sector in our province and the provincial protocol, was also attended by MAKÜ Acting Rector Prof. Dr. Durmuş Acar and Vice Rector Prof. Dr. Hüseyin Dalgar.  In his speech at the meeting, Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Vahit Kirişçi gave special attention to an important project carried out by Burdur Mehmet Akif Ersoy University in the field of livestock. He praised the Dairy Cattle Farms Standards Certification Program, accredited by the Turkish Accreditation Agency (TÜRKAK) with MAKÜ as the program owner, and announced that grant support would be provided to Dairy Cattle Farms in Burdur within the scope of this program.

In his speech, Minister Kirişçi stated that it is important that MAKÜ received approval from TÜRKAK as a “nationally accreditable program”; “Since 40% of Burdur's economy is related to milk, we attach great importance to this. In this context, we have initiated a joint study with our university, which has been accredited by TÜRKAK, our distinguished university in Burdur. Within the framework of this study, we wanted to categorize dairy cattle farms as A, B, C, and what are the deficiencies determined by our university within the scope of this project? Because our goal is for all farms to be A-class farms. In other words, if it is C, we want it to move up to B, and if it is B, to A. But the work that our university will do will reveal this promotion. We provided 5 million liras of support to our university here. Within the framework of this 5 million lira support, with Allah's permission, we will see together how each of the farms with identified deficiencies climbs upwards.” he said.

Within the scope of this project, which was announced to the sector for the first time by Minister Kirişçi; dairy cattle farms operating in our province will apply to the Provincial Directorate of Agriculture and Forestry to determine and certify quality standards. The farms that apply will be inspected on-site by independent evaluator expert academicians within the framework of the MAKÜ certification program, and a report will be prepared about the farm. After the relevant farm is defined as A, B, C, or Candidate Farm in the prepared report, the structural deficiencies that need to be addressed for it to be upgraded to a higher class will be identified. In line with the report prepared specifically for each farm, a grant support of up to 80% will be provided by the Provincial Directorate of Agriculture and Forestry for the relevant farm to be upgraded to a higher class. The project aims to support the upgrading of the standards of each farm to higher classes and to bring all farms to the A-class farm level as much as possible.

The Dairy Cattle Farms Certification project, which is just one of the many projects that MAKÜ has been working on for a long time, was accredited by TÜRKAK as a result of studies that have been ongoing for approximately three years. In recent months, MAKÜ, which was also accredited to issue the “Good Herd” certificate for small ruminant herds in addition to Dairy Cattle, has included this work directly in the support system of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, which is of great importance. This decision shows that a critical threshold has been reached in the livestock projects that MAKÜ has been carrying out with great dedication for 5 years and is a promising development in terms of reflecting other projects in state policies in the coming days.