Rising seasonal temperatures caused by climate change have negatively impacted sugar extraction from sugar beets. During the 2024–2025 harvest season, Turkey produced approximately 25 million tons of sugar beets, according to Ramazan Erkoyuncu, President of PANKOBİRLİK and Chairman of the Konya Sugar Beet Growers Cooperative.
Although the overall production of sugar beets has increased, the amount of sugar derived from them has declined, Erkoyuncu noted, attributing the drop to global warming — a trend observed not only in Turkey but around the world.
He stated that sugar production is estimated to have fallen by around 10 percent this season.
“In the previous season, we extracted 513,000 tons of sugar from 3.808 million tons of beets,” Erkoyuncu said. “This year, however, sugar output dropped to 460,000 tons, despite processing 3.775 million tons of beets.” He emphasized that this decrease is directly related to climate change.
“The temperature gap between day and night has narrowed, and the nighttime cooling essential for beets did not occur,” he explained.
Despite this decline, Erkoyuncu assured that Turkey will not experience a sugar shortage. “Thanks to a carryover stock of 400,000 tons from the last season, there is no supply issue — in fact, we have a surplus,” he said.
