Farms' Willingness to Grow Hazelnut Depending on Area-Based Support

Abstract

The aim of this study was to reveal the effects of possible changes in the area based supports on the farmers' willingness to grow hazelnuts in the authorized areas. The main material of the study was the primary data obtained from the 95 hazelnut farms selected with the stratified sampling method in the authorized areas of the districts of Terme and Carsamba of Samsun province. The Contingent Valuation method was used to determine the farmers' willingness to grow hazelnut at different support scenarios and Panel Poisson model was used to estimate the factors affecting the farmers' willingness to grow hazelnut. The research results shows that reducing or ending the area-based supports does not cause any decrease effect in the hazelnut plantation areas of the farms, whereas increases in the area-based supports would increase the hazelnut areas of the farms. Poisson model results show that an increase of 100 in the based support would increase the farmer' willingness to grow hazelnut by 3.86 decares. However, the farmers' willingness to grow hazelnut were higher of 4.46 decares for the farmers residing in the urban areas, 2.78 decares in higher household size, 1.64 decares in higher householders, 0.72 decare in larger farms and 0.65 decare in older householders compared to their peers. However, the main profession as farmer and generating higher gross profit per decare from hazelnut farming would increase the farmers' willingness to grow hazelnut by 2.54 and 0.085 deraces, respectively.