Black figs, which happened to be a favourite delicacy of the UK’s Queen Elizabeth II, are a traditional agricultural product of Turkey’s north-east. In recent years, women farmers have been making inroads in a historically male-dominated industry – but several tell Inside Turkey that obstacles remain.
Agricultural engineer Sıla Özkan comes from a rice farming family. She started her own business upon completing her graduate degree and has exported black figs to Moldova for the last year. Özkan successfully applied for state funding for female entrepreneurs, which is how she finances her production and sale of black figs.
“As an agricultural engineer, I knew what I needed to do. I took advantage of funding for female entrepreneurs and I started production right away. Since Bursa’s black figs are an added-value product, exports came shortly after,” she says.
Özkan finds that female entrepreneurs have more access to state subsidies, noting that the industry employs an equal number of men and women, but that there’s an imbalance in the roles they take up.
“There are plenty of women in Turkey’s agriculture sector but I wish they were more heavily involved in the entrepreneurial side of it,” Özkan says. “Agricultural entrepreneurship training needs to be increased for that, and state subsidies need to be expanded and advertised.”
Black figs, also dubbed “Bursa black” are unique to the western province of Bursa, which is a major farming region. The fruits are grown by over 10,000 farmers locally.
A visit from Queen Elizabeth II in 2008, as well as Kate Middleton’s reported use of black figs to cure morning sickness, helped boost overseas sales. Bursa’s black figs are currently exported to a host of European and Middle Eastern countries, as well as Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong.
Senih Yazgan, chair of Bursa Uludağ Fresh Produce Exporters’ Union (UYMSİB), told Inside Turkey that Bursa was responsible for more than half of Turkey’s 18,000 tonnes of fig exports in 2024’s five-month production season. The fruit brought in $38.2m in revenue during this period.
A fig farmer for over two decades, Sultan Fırtına has spent July and August in fig groves for years. With her colleagues, she wakes early and works until the afternoon to make sure the exported figs have the fruit’s unique scent.
“Being a woman farmer is nice and extremely difficult at once,” Fırtına says. Financial uncertainty is the biggest challenge she and her husband face: “You have a busy period at the farm, you live on your savings for half the year. So it’s really dire if the currency rate shoots up and lifts costs then.”
As a woman farmer struggling with costs, Fırtına would like the Turkish state to expand on policies that support and secure agriculture workers.
Fırtına’s husband Erkan has produced and traded figs for almost 40 years and says that the current system puts money in exporters’ pockets, instead of workers and producers.
“Exporters kept prices low this year. It’s the exporters making money, not producers. Workers don’t make much either. So, we need to come together,” Erkan says.
Farm workers would also benefit from black fig producers coming together against exporters and exporting their own goods via cooperatives, Fırtına says, noting that state subsidies would be required to set this up.
Agricultural engineer Sıla Özkan’s father, farmer Osman, also struggles with increased costs and says that they need increased state subsidies to maintain production in this female labour-intensive sector.
“Most years, domestic consumers can’t find any black figs while consumers abroad can savor it,” Osman says. “Exports could go up if state subsidies are extended and access is facilitated, domestic consumers will in turn have easier and cheaper access to black figs if exports boost production.”
Another problem interviewees raised is that international consumers have easier access to black figs than domestic ones.
“If I lived in Britain, I would eat more black figs for my health than I do in Turkey, since it would be cheaper,” Sıla Özkan says. “Turkish consumers, frankly, don’t eat as many of them due to the high price.”