Story Highlights

• Türkiye's agricultural workers often lack formal employment protections, leaving them at the risk of losing their income and slipping into poverty in the case of illness or injury
• By pairing wage subsidies with skills training and social insurance, a World Bank-backed project helped create over 12,200 formal jobs across the country
• These efforts have improved farm laborer retention and morale, boosted farms’ productivity, and expanded opportunities for groups often excluded from the formal labor market including women and refugees

Heat stroke. Sudden weather changes. Falls. Chemical exposure. Getting injured by heavy equipment, or the wrong swing of a tool. Despite the many dangers of their work, most agricultural workers on Turkish farms lack access to benefits such as healthcare, retirement pensions, or financial protection from work-related accidents and illnesses. Given that these laborers are often working seasonally and informally in jobs without employment guarantees, the risk of losing their income and slipping into poverty is a continual possibility.

Estimates suggest that over 80% of workers in Türkiye’s agriculture sector were informal even before the influx of refugees from the conflict in Syria. Agricultural employers are largely exempt from labor market regulations, and seasonal farm jobs fall outside the country’s formal employment requirements. Working conditions on farms are often poor, with earnings frequently below minimum wage and inadequate worker protection.

The seasonal nature of agricultural work where farmers hire laborers on a day-to-day basis provides little incentive for employers to offer workers formalized employment. One day, a laborer might pick apricots and the next harvest eggplants. This can result in workers lacking the relevant skills or experience for the tasks at hand, leading to injuries and costly crop losses.

Reducing that vulnerability is critical for reducing inequality, bolstering the agricultural sector, and strengthening the country’s economy and food security. Doing so requires systemic change: boosting formality in the country’s labor market to create more stable employment; investing in skills training for agricultural workers and formalization awareness for farmers; and improving working conditions.

Bringing Formality to Turkish Agriculture

Addressing these challenges is where the World Bank-backed Formal Employment Support in Agriculture Sector (FESAS) project came in. Implemented by the Agricultural Credit Cooperatives (ACC) with financial support from the European Union, FESAS helped promote labor formality and introduced insurance for farm laborers, helping to create jobs, boost agricultural productivity, and protect some of the country’s most vulnerable workers.

For laborers, access to the kind of social insurance provided by the program was a gamechanger. If the weather turned poor or workers became sick or were injured, they could still get paid.

Ismail Sulun, a farmer from Izmir remarked, "I always wanted my workers to be insured, but I couldn't do so due to financial difficulties. The employment costs were too high for us. Now, we can afford it."

Employers also saw tangible benefits: improved retention and morale, higher productivity, increased worker skills, and better protection for their workers against workplace accidents and injuries. But formalization offered something beyond productivity gains by extending to workers the rights and protections that come with formal employment. As Sedat Barış, a farmer from Bursa, put it: “A worker should not only earn wages but also have rights. We are striving to comply with official procedures.”

Working Year Round

FESAS also helped enhance farm productivity through wage subsidies to incentivize farmers to employ workers while upgrading their skills. Instead of working intermittently on different farms under unfavorable conditions, workers were able to become full-time employees on a single farm. This improved overall productivity by developing a more skilled labor force and providing avenues for specialization.

Mesut Basar is a banana producer from Türkiye’s southern province of Mersin, who expanded into other high-value crops such as avocados. "Before, we used to hire daily workers. We would hire whomever we could find — two days for one guy, three days for another. It was difficult because not everyone did the same job. After registering with FESAS, our workers have become permanent. The guys I hired didn't know anything about bananas. We said, 'Do what we show you, forget what you know,' and that's how we started. There's a noticeable difference in production now compared to two years ago."

FESAS also provided training sessions to more than 2,000 farmers like Mesut, covering topics such as accounting, occupational health and safety, and legal regulations. These trainings raised farmers’ awareness of their roles and responsibilities in offering formal employment and equipped them with practical knowledge to manage paperwork related to the social security system.

Outreach Builds Results, Changes Lives

FESAS field staff engaged with employers, farm laborers, trade associations, leader farmers and local administrations through regular meetings in rural communities to outline opportunities FESAS offered to farm owners and workers. Applications and information sessions were organized in locations that farmers could easily access and visit as part of their daily farming routines—local ACC branches, coffee houses, chamber offices and even wedding halls sitting unused during daytime.

1,638 farmers participated in FESAS, and the program helped create more than 12,200 formal jobs across the country. And many of these workers were from groups often excluded from the formal labor market. Nearly 40% of the laborers supported by FESAS were women, and over half of the farmers participating in the program employed refugees during the five years of the project’s implementation, which concluded in June 2025.

The project's success laid the foundation for a second phase. Building on these achievements, FESAS launched its second phase in 2026 in the same provinces to continue supporting the creation of formal jobs and expanding opportunities for vulnerable groups in Türkiye's agricultural sector—helping ensure that more farmers and workers can benefit from the security, stability, and opportunities that formal employment provides.

FESAS’s ongoing impact shows the potential that investing in social security and workers gives to farmers, laborers, and the country’s agricultural sector, creating a more skilled workforce, boosting productivity, and reducing poverty in rural areas.