Ankara, Jul 09, 2010 (BBC Monitoring via COMTEX) -- Once a "grain silo", Turkey has become an importer of agricultural products, according to a report of a Turkish trade chamber.

The Ankara Chamber of Commerce (ATO) prepared a report in which it said Turkey was importing many agricultural products from over 100 countries including cotton, wheat, barley, rice, corn, tea, broad-bean, garlic, banana, chickpea and lentil.

Turkey, which has agricultural fields two-folds bigger than the total area of Greece, imports cotton from Greece and the United States. Wheat comes from Russia, barley from France, rice from Egypt, corn from Ukraine, tea from Sri Lanka, broad-bean from Italy, garlic from China, banana from Panama, Chickpea from Mexico and lentil from Canada.

Having 24.5 million hectares of agricultural fields, Turkey fallows 4.2 million hectares of it every year, which is equal to the total area of the Netherlands.

Turkey's agricultural product exports were around 2bn US dollars, and its imports were only around 50m dollars at the beginning of 1980s.

In 30 years, these figures reached 4.3bn dollars and 4.5bn dollars respectively, which means a two-fold rise in exports and 90-fold rise in imports

According to figures of Turkey's statistical board, TurkStat, Turkey can only meet its demands in sugar beet, potato and chickpea.

"Turkey is getting agriculturally depended," ATO chairman Sinan Aygun said. He also said agricultural production was not increasing in parallel to the rise in population.