Forecasts for Turkey fresh fig production and dried fig export: Arima model approach

Abstract

Turkey is the biggest fig producer and exporter of the world with its nearly 10 million fig tree and nearly 300,000 of fig producing annually. Therefore it is important to make foresight about fresh fig producing and quantity of dried fig export for Turkey, which has ability to affect not only domestic market but also world market. In the study, in order to make the predictions of the export quantities of dried figs and production quantities of fresh figs for the years between 2019-2025 for Turkey; using the annual data of 1961-2018 for fresh fig production and 1980-2018 for dried fig export, obtained from the statistics of "Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations" and "Turkish Statistical Institute", estimation was made with ARIMA model which is one of the time series analysis methods. Within the scope of the analysis; Dickey-Fuller unit root test was used to evaluate the stability of the variables, and the mean absolute percentage error and Theil's Inequality Coefficient was used to test the predictive power of the model. Considering many criteria, the most suitable model for both fresh fig production and dried fig export amount has been determined as ARIMA (2,1,2). According to the results of foresight; it is estimated that fig production will increase to 317.000 tons in 2025 with an increasing trend outside of 2020 and 2022, and the amount of dried figs will increase to 97.000 tons with an increase of 19% in 2025 compared to 2018. Under the assumption that 2.9 kg of fresh figs are required for the production of 1 kg of dried figs, considering the estimation made for both series in this research; it can be stated that 74.17% of the figs to be produced in 2019, 80.10% of the figs to be produced in 2022 and 86.05% of the figs to be produced in 2025 will be exported as dried figs. Considering that this rate was 46.08% in 1980, 52.03% in 2000 and 66.28% in 2010; it can be concluded that the figs to be produced in the estimated years will be exported as a dried fig at a much higher rate than the previous years.