"Women Entrepreneur Meetings" organized by Garanti BBVA and KAGIDER was held with a special online event.

The event was organized in different sessions with the participation of the winners of the Turkey's Women Entrepreneur Competition from previous years, hosted by Yekta Kopan. TABİT A.Ş. co-founder Tulin Akın, Defne Pelet founder Ayşegül Abacı, GeneOn founder Begüm Aytan, Medlis founder Melis Büyüksan participated in the session titled "Women Entrepreneurs Making a Difference for a Sustainable World and Social Development". In the session, which took place alternately, the participants were asked questions about their initiatives.

In the session, which was very informative and enjoyable, moderator Yekta Kopan asked Tülin Akın about Tabit.

Kopan: What does Tabit do?

Akın: Tabit was founded in 2004. Since its establishment, we have endeavored to bring the farmers in Turkey, who are closed and distant from information, communication and technology, closer to information and technology, and we have contributed and will continue to contribute to millions of farmers beyond the borders of this initiative, not limited to Turkey. Our aim is to empower small family farmers by using technology and, in a sense, to prepare them for change and transformation. We established Turkey's first agricultural marketing website (tarimsalpazarlama.com) in 2004. In this way, we aimed to move agricultural marketing to the digital environment. In the process, we delivered all kinds of agricultural information and content to farmers' phones via SMS. For the last 5 years, we have established Vodafone Smart Village in Koçarlı-Kasaplar neighborhood in Aydın. We are a role model for everyone related to the sector both in Turkey and abroad. We are currently working on a project in Algeria. Likewise, we are providing consultancy-support services for 3 Smart Village projects to be established in Azerbaijan.

Kopan: The whole world is not conscious about Smart Agriculture. Have you been able to raise awareness especially about women entrepreneurship with your work? What is the perspective of women, are they involved in the process?
Akın: We do not discriminate between men and women in the sector, but we observe that women are more willing and participatory in using technology and incorporating it into their work.  Especially in small family farming, our women are very tired. If it is a technology that will make their lives easier, they want to use it.  We also attach importance to collaborations in this field.

We care about technology in agriculture because we want to protect our future. For example, water use. If we look at water consumption statistics, 70% of the water we consume comes from agricultural irrigation. This is a very high rate. There is an issue that everyone is talking about now, not only in Turkey but all over the world. The global climate problem and the related food crisis. The whole world is currently experiencing this problem and cannot produce seasonally due to these conditions. Farmers are leaving agriculture over time, all over the world. If we use the right agricultural techniques, this will be of great benefit. Not just producing, but producing with the right technique.

Breaking up: Do you have any suggestions on this subject?

Akin: Farming is an open factory.  It has no walls, no protection. If the correct and healthy production stages are not realized, this will bring much bigger problems. We consume, babies consume. So it is an activity that directly affects our lives. Therefore, we have to look at agricultural production technically. It is not a field of endeavor to be done by saying, "I'm bored of city life, let me do agriculture. If you are going to do agriculture, you should know the village, rural life. It should not be seen as a romantic act. For example, we provide trainings on this subject. Many people who participated in the trainings left at the end of the training saying that this job is not for me. So it is not easy. You need to be knowledgeable, conscious and determined. We also wrote a book to raise awareness on this issue: Farming 101: A Guide to Returning to the Village and Starting Agriculture - Coşkun Yıldırım. You can get the book from our website.  Click here to buy the book.