Determination of Oilseed Production Potential Using Geographic Information Systems: The Case of Balıkesir Province

Oilseed crops are considered strategic products in the world and in our country. The use of oilseed crops, one of these resources, in biodiesel and industrial areas other than the food sector has increased the demand for vegetable oils all over the world. The aim of this study is to reveal the oilseed production potential of Balıkesir province with the help of production data in the world and Turkey, with the help of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), which has been widely used recently. For this purpose, the general situation in the world and Turkey was first presented and then evaluated at the provincial and district scale. Data on the world scale were obtained from FAO, and data on Turkey were obtained from TÜİK. All data were transferred to the GIS software according to the harvested area, production and yield amounts, and density change maps were created according to the amount of data available in the province, between 5-10 classes on the provincial scale, according to the years. It was aimed to determine the existing areas with low and high yields and to create a basis for production policies and plans that can be made in those regions in the following years. Soybean ranks first among the products most cultivated in terms of harvested area among oilseed crops in the world. The countries where soybean is cultivated the most are Brazil (40.894.968 ha), USA (34.939.320 ha), Argentina (158.742.66 ha), India (121.465.80 ha) and China (10.243.000 ha). After soybean, canola, cotton, sunflower, safflower, sesame and poppy come first. In terms of the total number of provinces where products are cultivated in Turkey, sunflower (59 provinces) comes first, safflower (42 provinces) comes second and sesame (32 provinces) comes third. In terms of area, sunflower (3.618.226 ha) comes first, peanut (176.733 ha) comes second and cotton (1.659.601 ha) comes third. In Balıkesir province, which has a total agricultural area of 3.850.958 da, oilseed plant production is carried out in an area of 283.416 decares (7.5%). It has been determined that sunflower is the first crop in the province, sesame is the second and canola or rapeseed is the third.