Farmers can't sell animal for the Feast due to economic crisis

Van used to be a center of animal husbandry in North Kurdistan and Turkey. The traditional selling of animals for the Feast of the Sacrifice is proving a disaster for farmers as people don’t have money.

Van, which ranks first in ovine breeding, has 2,500,000 animals. Due to the war, hundreds of plateaus and pastures were banned, and villages and hamlets were evacuated, with heavy consequences for the livestock sector.

The policies of the AKP for North Kurdistan cause damage to animal producers. One of the biggest reasons for the loss of feeders is the 200 percent increase in feed and straw prices and imports of livestock.

Idris Aslan has been breeding livestock for 30 years in Van and said that the animals he kept for the Feast of Sacrifice remained in his hands.

Expressing that he has been trying to sell his animals in the city center for days, Aslan added that there are many who come to look at the animals, but very few buy them.

Aslan said: “This year the situation is very bad. We are going back economically every day. We try to sell our sheep and goats for one thousand and 1, 850 Turkish liras. We are trying to sell them at a price which is a loss for us, and yet nobody buys the animals.”

Sadık Ceylan said that he could not buy an animal for the feast due to the economic crisis. He added that he had been unemployed for months. “We wanted to buy animals as a family this year, but we have no money to buy them. According to animal owners, animal prices are very low, but for us they are still high.”