(Ankara / Istanbul, 2005) KA Research Labs (KARL) has concluded a four-year engagement as exclusive research partner and advisor to the World Bank (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / International Development Association) on the Agricultural Reform Implementation Project (ARIP) in Turkey. The project, approved by the World Bank’s Board of Directors on 12 July 2001 and implemented through the Republic of Turkey’s Undersecretariat of Treasury, carried total financing of USD 661.96 million — one of the largest agricultural reform programmes undertaken in Turkey and in the Europe and Central Asia region during the period.
ARIP was designed to support a fundamental structural transition in Turkish agricultural policy: the phased elimination of price supports, fertilizer subsidies, and credit subsidies, and their replacement with a Direct Income Support (DIS) system linking payments to land registration rather than to crop production. The programme also encompassed a Farmer Transition component to assist producers moving out of heavily subsidised crops — principally hazelnut and tobacco — and a restructuring programme for Turkey’s network of Agricultural Sales Cooperatives and their Unions (ASCUs).
KARL’s mandate encompassed the design and execution of comprehensive baseline and impact assessment studies to evaluate the programme’s socioeconomic and agricultural outcomes across Turkey. To support continuous monitoring, KARL established and maintained a nationwide farmers’ panel, enabling the systematic tracking of programme effectiveness, payment control compliance, and behavioural change in farming practices over the full four-year implementation period. In its advisory capacity, KARL worked in close partnership with the World Bank and the Turkish Government’s Project Coordination Unit to inform programme rollout, providing research-based insights that contributed to the refinement of Direct Income Support policy and the evaluation of programme objectives against field-level outcomes.
The programme’s monitoring and evaluation component — for which KARL served as the exclusive research partner — was identified in the project design as the principal mechanism for gauging the social and financial impact of the agricultural reform across participating farming communities nationwide.
ABOUT THE PROJECT
The Agricultural Reform Implementation Project (ARIP) was a hybrid investment and adjustment operation financed by the World Bank under Project ID P070286. It was implemented by the Republic of Turkey’s Undersecretariat of Treasury as lead agency, with component implementation managed through the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and a dedicated Project Coordination Unit. Full project documentation is available through the World Bank’s open knowledge repository.