Urban Agriculture
For many years, he produced vegetables that he consumed mostly in the city center. That's why those over a certain age remember this legacy. Dursun Buyurman, who is one of the farmers who use ancestral seeds in urban agriculture, also sells the vegetables he has carefully grown in his shop located just inside his garden in Idealtepe.
Istanbul has grown so much that the border between agricultural fields and the concrete desert suddenly disappears. When you look at the city from Aydos Hill, the highest point of Istanbul, the greenhouses and gardens in the Carsi District of Yakacik, illuminated by the lights at sunset, contrast with the skyscrapers on the horizon.
During the Ottoman period, mosques were built together with their gardens. The only surviving example of this tradition is the Piyale Pasha Mosque and garden in Kasimpasa, whose construction was completed in 1573. Mehmet and Cemile Ozan couple, who came to Istanbul to make capital by selling their livestock in the village, are farming in this last mosque's orchard.
For many years, he produced vegetables that he consumed mostly in the city center. That's why those over a certain age remember this legacy. Dursun Buyurman, who is one of the farmers who use ancestral seeds in urban agriculture, also sells the vegetables he has carefully grown in his shop located just inside his garden in Idealtepe.
2020 - 2021
Turkey's two major cities, Istanbul and Izmir contains the oldest agricultural fields in the world within an ancient city district. For most of its history, it was an exemplary city with its self-sufficient production. Now it consumes the agricultural product it produces in a year, almost in one day. Istanbul, where agricultural fields are buried in concrete and its villages are joined to the city, is about to lose the fertile lands that have fed it for millennia. In the epidemic period, when the importance of self-sufficiency is understood more clearly, there are people who do agriculture in the city, from the villages of Istanbul to the gardens in the city, from the roofs of shopping centers to their own gardens.