A 282-member doctors' cooperative puts sensors in the olive grove

Ahmet Rıza Şahin, an infectious diseases specialist at Adana City Training and Research Hospital, founded the Physicians' Agricultural Cooperative with colleagues in 2023. Now 282 members strong, it grows olives, sesame, almonds, wheat, tomatoes and aubergines on 500 dönüm in the district of İmamoğlu.

What the project covers

A digital farming model is being applied on 100 of the 135 dönüm of bearing olive grove. It was prepared under the Socially Inclusive Green Transition (SoGreen) programme, coordinated by the Ministry of Industry and Technology with World Bank financing, and accepted by the Çukurova Development Agency.

According to Şahin the fund is 2 million lira, covering three things:

• Buried soil sensors: the trees' water and fertiliser needs monitored remotely
• Rainwater harvesting: a collection pool built
• Biological compost: pruned olive branches fermented

Why it is worth noting

The reported gain is avoiding unnecessary irrigation and fertilisation — saving both input cost and time.

That touches a point rarely discussed in olive growing: the olive is drought-tolerant, so it is often assumed it need not be irrigated. But where yield is the aim, water and nutrient management determine the crop directly. Irrigating and fertilising without measurement usually means spending more than necessary.

The second point is scale. A cooperative of 282 members can share an investment no single grower could carry alone. Sensor infrastructure does not pay for itself on a five-dönüm plot; across a hundred it does.

⚠ The report gives no measured result on yield; the gains described are in inputs and time. The effect on the crop will only be visible in end-of-season figures.