● Agriculture
YDA Group’s affiliate in the agriculture sector, YDA Agriculture, Inc. is one of the best agricultural organizations in Turkey with its high-tech greenhouse investments. With products offered to the market under its registered trademark Naturagreen, it maintains its superior position in Turkey with its premium quality and fair price. YDA Agriculture creates a difference in Turkey by offering a special project with geothermally heated, ne generation, fully automated greenhouses planned to cultivate truss tomatoes. Truss tomatoes thus produced in the high-tech greenhouses of YDA Agriculture’s are exported to global food industries and large supermarket chains throughout the year. YDA Agriculture continues its short, middle and long term strategic investments to carry Turkish agriculture to the top of the global marketplace. Within this scope, YDA Agriculture aims to sustain its leadership position in Turkey and around the world with its core principles and its “Unconditional Customer Satisfaction” policy, maintaining its quality and reliability, keeping abreast of technological developments, making new investments, and creating new brands. To continue to take its success further, YDA Agriculture defines, assesses and keeps in check all hazards related to food safety in the production process – from the reception of raw material all the way to the consumption of the product. Applying high technology and global standards to produce according to universal norms, and certifying this with national and international certificates, documents and awards, YDA Agriculture’s products conform with the Turkish Food Codex and standards in Turkey and with the specifications of exporters abroad. What lies behind the success of YDA Agriculture today, which has quickly become a brand in the industry with its healthy and trusted products, is its experience and expertise, theoretical knowledge and technical know-how, delicious and healthy products offered to customers, commercial and ethical values, collective notion of work, and value given to its employees. Creating a difference in Turkey with its new generation fully-automated greenhouse project, equipped with geothermal heating to cultivate truss tomatoes, and planned to occupy a land of 400 decares (400,000 m2) in 2009 with 150 (150,000 m2) decares already completed, YDA Agriculture Food Industry and Trade, Inc. currently continues its operations with 3 greenhouses of 150,000 m2 situated on 1,875 lots of 718,868 m2 field on the 10th km of the Dikili-Bergama Highway in the Kaynarca district of Bergama, Izmir.
YDA Agriculture is a market leader in cultivating truss tomatoes in soilless culture with its Good Agricultural Practices and GlobalGap certification. Surrounded by Izmir on the west, Bergama on the east, Çandarlı on the south, and Balıkesir Altınova on the north, the facility taps into the geothermal resources of the Kaynarca district, where it is located, to heat its greenhouses. Research reveals that soil productivity in Turkey dropped by 23% over the past decade. Soilless culture lately in development in the field of agriculture has already become an attractive field of investment for the present and the future. Soilless culture, or “hydroponics,” has reached a size of USD 40 billion around the world. One of the leading organizations to use this technique in Turkey is YDA Agriculture, Inc. Eight thousand of 61,000 hectares of greenhouses have converted to soilless culture in Turkey. Today, the greenhouses owned by YDA Agriculture, Inc., make up 3% of the modern greenhouse investment areas in the country. When the total investment (of 450 decares) is complete, this rate will exceed 7%. Regarding the size of the enterprise, it ranks 2nd in its region and in the top 5 in Turkey among modern greenhouse enterprises. In soilless culture, the yield is five times higher than in conventional agriculture. The yield per decare is 50-55 tons in summer, and 30 tons in winter.
Biological partners
We practice agriculture without resorting to chemicals in our greenhouses, but we employ the help of Bombus terrestris bees for the pollination of tomato flowers, and predators such as Nesidiocoris tenuis to fight pests.
Global GAP Certificate
YDA Agriculture operates within the framework of a quality system recognized around the world and by the European Union for good agricultural practices to obtain hormone-free and highly aromatic produce with a longer shelf life, which focuses on human, plant and environmental health, and where each stage is traceable.