Kadir - The cotton farmer
The Turkish farmer Kadir grows organic cotton. But his income is small. Tourism seems to be becoming an alternative for him, as his fields lie near Dalyan, a well-known holiday resort on the Mediterranean coast of Türkiye.
The work on the cotton fields is hard. Kadir does without chemical weed-killers and artificial fertilisers; his workers hoe the heavy soil and pick the cotton by hand. Several times a year the fields are inspected by environmental experts, and only then does the harvest receive the certificate of "controlled organic cultivation (kbA)" and is bought up by the German eco-mail-order company „hess natur“.
Kadir likes being a farmer and is glad that, through organic farming, he does not burden the environment around the unique reed delta of Dalyan any further. Organic agriculture means high-quality products for the consumer, but above all it protects soil, water and air and preserves biological diversity. Care is taken to keep the cycle as closed as possible: part of the plant produce serves as animal feed, and the manure arising from keeping livestock in turn serves as nutrients for the plants. Planning the crop rotation and preventive pest control are important foundations of organic cultivation.
But Kadir cannot feed his family with the income from agriculture. He complains about the low prices, which even for organic cotton depend on the world market. Globalisation reaches all the way into his small village; the prices for cotton are listed on the stock exchange and have steadily fallen in recent years. Kadir has therefore bought a boat with which he takes tourists through the protected reed delta of Dalyan to the nearby beach.
The region became world-famous after conservationists from all over the world prevented, at the end of the 1980s, a hotel from being built on the nesting beach of the „Caretta-Caretta“ sea turtles. A German travel company had, together with its Turkish partner, already had the first foundations laid when construction was stopped by the Turkish government. Under pressure from the environmentalists, the German Bundestag had previously decided not to pay out the development-aid funds promised for the project.
But now the holidaymakers come anyway; they want to see the „rescued paradise“. On some days more than 400 large wooden boats travel through the protected reeds. A good business, in which Kadir too would like to share. Conservationists such as June Haimoff, who lives in Dalyan, view the development critically and ask themselves whether their success at the time, achieved also through the media, was not what first made the region so well known.
Even as the captain of a tourist boat Kadir has not become rich, for the investments are too high. It is also difficult for him to reconcile agriculture and tourism. When most of the work is due on the fields, most of the tourists are there too. And Kadir knows that the annually growing number of visitors burdens the nature worth protecting. Organic farming fits the picture better, but does it offer Kadir and his family a future?
Besides detailed information on the organic cultivation of cotton, the film also offers an insight into the everyday life of a traditional Turkish village as well as outstanding landscape footage from the region around Dalyan. And it raises the question: what plundering of nature can we still afford? What is nature worth to us? Will only tourism in future provide the locals with a sufficient income? Because people are willing to spend money on travel and excursions, but textiles from environmentally friendly cultivation are too expensive for them?