Around half of Turkey’s land area is used for agriculture – as arable land, pasture, permanent grassland or for tree crops. As part of the South-Eastern Anatolia Project (GAP), 22 dams were built on the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, and agriculture shifted from subsistence farming to market-oriented mass production. When the photographs shown here were taken – mainly between the 1950s and 1990s – traditional farming methods persisted in areas where mechanisation and large-scale farming structures had not yet taken hold.

Left photo: In traditional grain threshing, so-called threshing sledges separate the chaff from the grain – a technique already documented in depictions from the 4th millennium BC.

Right photo: Sharp-edged stone blades are embedded in the underside of the wooden threshing sledges, which separate the grain from the chaff.

On the outskirts of Birecik in the Euphrates Valley, grain is drying in the sun on the flat roofs. It is likely to be maize, which is constantly being turned with the feet to ensure that all the kernels dry evenly.

The Mersin region on the southern Turkish Mediterranean coast, with its hot and humid climate, offers ideal conditions for the cold-sensitive banana plant. Sweet Turkish bananas are grown both on terraces and in greenhouses. The individual ‘banana fingers’ develop from the huge banana flower in a complex process.

In the middle of a peach orchard, smallholders plough the soil with a draught animal – carefully, so as not to damage the delicate trees. Even today, draught animals can still occasionally be seen in orchards instead of tractors.

In a village not far from the Batman River, east of Silwan, tobacco leaves are hanging to dry on wooden racks and under the eaves of a mud-brick house.

Left photo: Tending to the cotton plants at a stage of growth when the first flowers have already opened. 

Right photo: Burst cotton bolls at harvest time, although the stems and leaves have already turned brown. Cotton plants rely on artificial irrigation and are among the most important crops grown in Turkey.