| Summary: | Goat production is a traditional occupation, which has been performed for many centuries especially in rural regions of Turkey. Although Turkey has suitable conditions both ecological and social for goat production, the number of goats dramatically decreased in the last two decades until 2010. It was aimed to investigate current goat production system and the reasons that caused dramatic decrease of goat stocks in Turkey. Materials of study were obtained from statistical data, forest legislations, land use observations and unstructured interviews. Diagnosis and Design Methodology developed by the International Council for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF) was used to reach the results. As a result, it was identified that there were problems regarding the use of land between villagers breeding goats and the forest administration and this problem affected goat production negatively. The forestry policies implemented in Turkey aimed to decrease and even eliminate goat production based on the view that it harms forests. For this reason, the number of goats dramatically decreased to 5 million in 2009. After Turkish government allowed goat grazing in state forests using grazing management plan with a decision adopted in 2011, the effect of this change gave positive results in a short time and this number increased to about 10 million in 2014.
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