Plain, one hour from the Mediterranean Sea coast, is Turkey's fourth largest city and the Gateway to the GAP region. Agriculture is the heart of the Adana economy.
Primary crops are cotton, grains, vegetables and fruits.
Government policies supportive of the textile sector have long encouraged cotton cultivation. Local yarn producers purchase seventy percent of their cotton locally. A spring freeze chilled 1997 production but does not appear to have diminished new investment in this rapidly developing sector. A growing farm labor shortage, in part due to the agricultural expansion in the GAP region, is expected to compel farmers to invest more heavily in automation. Adana has also developed a vigorous industrial sector, which is closely linked to the city's agricultural strength in cotton and food products.