Evaluation of national farmers' registry data in geo-information context: Case study of Trabzon, Turkey

Abstract

For the management of agricultural subsidies, information on farmers and farmland in Turkey is registered in the National Registry of Farmers (NRF) system. However, the system currently does not include any integrated spatial data. This hinders the population of necessary information on the actual agricultural land and thus, makes it impossible to correlate farmers' declaration with the actual agricultural land use. In this study, NRF data in two pilot areas in the province of Trabzon, Turkey were evaluated using digital cadastral data and ortho photo/image (ortho products). For the evaluation, the actual land use patterns of study areas were extracted from ortho products and then the areas of actual land use patterns were compared with the corresponding areas in the registries. As a result, it was determined that nearly 70% of the actual agricultural land was not registered in the NRF system. In addition, parcel based comparisons between registries and corresponding actual land use pattern uncovered considerable un-systematic anomaly between the reality of agricultural land use and farmers' declarations. It is suggested that the current system should be further developed in terms of geo-spatial data by integrating digital cadastral data and ortho products.