Opportunities of organic agriculture in Albania

The perspectives of contribution to organic agriculture, aside from the market aspects, have to be seen in their broader sense. It should be argued that the creation of the organic agriculture might contribute to the conservation of the traditional customs and practices. The possibility of using a higher premium than labour might encourage the population to deal in agriculture for much longer. The organic agriculture has proven that it is able to provide efficient possibilities on diversification and penetration into the market, this when reference is being made to both marginal and less developed areas. These possibilities do guarantee a satisfactory return for farmers and retains a satisfactory use of the natural resources. We recommend a series of interventions in the integrated organic system to occur over an efficient action plan at the national level that is primarily intended: - to satisfy and make the normative framework on the sector much easier to be implemented; - to promote organic agriculture at all levels; - to organize with other links of supply chain at the start and at the end of the production cycle, that is by improving the availability of inputs, by promoting processing and the positioning of products in the market; - to support the formation, research and extension - to develop the organic product markets through a consolidation of the exports, as well as affair share of attention to the typology of the potential customers in the food market (urban populations with high incomes, tourists that appreciate the rural wealth and the nature of the country). The presence of such policies constitutes one of the development of a connection between policies of territory conservation and agriculture in the strategic activities of the development program of agriculture, programs where the environmental policies, tourism and organic agriculture constitutes the entirety of a sustainable solution and an evaluation of food products, in the rural development and the protection of territory

The perspective of rural development in Albania – Evidence of microfinance in agriculture.

Left totally unchanged after transition, Albanian farming derived from land reform is still characterized as being a self-sufficient agricultural model: a smallholding venture of around 1 hectare with low external inputs and labour-intensive techniques. Over the past decade Albania opened its doors to the market economy but that process seems not to have extended and embraced the rural economy. Why? The hypothesis is that along with land reform effects enduring due to typical land market inelasticity, there is a strong pillar of this peasant household’s equilibrium: farm structure consolidation during Albanian transition is a peculiar part-time smallholding venture which could be labelled “transnational part-time peasant farm household”. This subject doesn’t demand credits to purchase land orienting itself toward the market. It demands credit to strengthen its own self-consumption-oriented structure. So the aim of this paper is to consider why the analyzed micro-credit system, and, by extent, this special smallholding, would contain elements of sustainable development dynamics in Albania

The experience of microfinance in Albanian agriculture.

Left totally unchanged with land reforms starting and consolidating the alleged smallholding venture of around 1 hectares with low external inputs and labor intensive technology Albanian farming is characterized as being a self sufficient agricultural model. Over the past decade Albania opened its doors to the market economy but that process seems not to have extended and embraced the rural economy. Why? The hypothesis is that land reform effects did not endure and filter through due to typical market inelasticity, along with a strong pillar of this peasant household’s equilibrium: farm structure consolidation during Albanian transition is a peculiar part-time smallholding venture which could be labelled “translational part-time farm”. This subject doesn’t demand credits to purchase land orienting itself toward the market. It demands credit to strengthen its own self-consumption-oriented structure. So the aim of this paper is to consider why the analyzed micro-credit system would contain elements of sustainable development dynamics in Albanian rural environment

Constraints and strenghts of microfinance in agriculture: a comparison between Albania and Honduras

An early strand of the literature focuses on the preferences of farm households toward risk. Majority of these studies, on the basis of both experimental and observed data on farmer behaviour, conclude that peasants are risk-averse, (e.g., Moscardi & de Janvry 1977, Binswanger & Sillers 1983). However, this empirical literature wrongly attributes to risk aversion all the departures from economic efficiency and confounds risk behaviour with other underlying factors. The empirical evidence (Roumasset, 1976; Binswanger, 1980, Eswaran & Kotwal, 1989 and 1990) makes it possible to postulate that such differences in farms behaviour could only be explained by the differences in farm household constraints, such as access to credit, marketing, extension programs, institutional arrangements, etc. (Mendola, 2007). On this brief statement of the problem, the paper compares two national cases, Albania and Honduras, discordant in terms of results of micro-credit applied to agriculture. The performances of these micro-credit systems are used as indicators of market opportunities for the farm household and its structural development in disadvantaged socio-economic contexts. The comparison proposed is based on an exploratory research on the Albanian Savings and Credit Associations (Belletti & Leksinaj, 2011a), and a logit model calibrated using the database collected in the research project "Alternative Rural Financial Systems, the case of Honduras" (Falck, 2001). The hypothesis supported in this work is that the opportunities offered to peasant farm households by access to microcredit is positively influenced by its connection to local markets while it is adversely affected by specialization and international market dependence. In Albania, access to credit is producing positive results in the direction of a better integration between farm households and local markets. In addition, this integration seems to occur in a process of consolidation of smallholding structures resulting from agrarian reform rather than an evolution toward specialization. By contrast, in Honduras the farm household is characterized by specialization in the production of commodities largely traded on the international market (coffee, cereals, etc.), and this despite the fact that Honduras farm household appears suited to production oriented to self-consumption under the constraint of size and the high cost of market access. This smallholding does not seem able to find in the credit opening channels a sufficient condition to initiate a process of income generation. So the smallholding placed in difficult socio-economic contexts seems to be able to generate income if it is oriented to production for local markets while it seems to be financially inefficient if it is oriented to foreign commodities markets. The case of Albania shows that access to credit results in increased economic and financial efficiency of peasant farm but not the increase of farm size

Constraints and strengths of microfinance in agriculture: a comparison between Albania and Honduras to make assumptions on the trajectories of territorial rural development

Proceedings: International Conference "Fostering Development of Agriculture in Albania Through Improved Use of Agricultural Resources" Faculty of Economics and Agribusiness, Agricultural University of Tirana, AHEED Project (Hawai University and USAID) and GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit)

The Role of Agriculture in the Territorial Rural Development in Albania

This paper focuses primarily on the aspect of local development in Albania. In it there will be presented a comprehensive overview of instruments critical to policy formulation and to the development of local agricultural systems in the primary sector. First of all, the paper’s intent and purpose is to identify the potentials existential to various types of farms encountered in the region which will be the very focus of the study. A better acquaintance with the regional agriculture does not mean only a wealth of information over the manufacturing characteristics and the farms structure, but also help gain a deeper understanding into the sustainability of farm equilibriums and their capacities in relation to the structural and organizational adaptation. To achieve this, by way of this paper we intend to evaluate the sustainability and the potentiality of incomes in the various types of farms as well as to conduct an analysis into the relationship of supply chain and into the competitiveness of the production system. This is concerned with the competitive systems at both local and overseas levels. The ability to reward factors of production and the ability of farms to generate incomes represents the key element on the basis of which lies the analysis of possible transformation processes of farms and their development, as to be expected in the future

Perspectives of rural development and the role of agricultural lending in Albania

Proceedings: Faculty of Economy & Agribusiness (Tirana), AHEED Project (Hawaii University and USAID) & Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), International Conference on"Farm efficiency and vertical integration of actors as factors contributing to increase of competitiveness. Role of private and public actors". Deliverable of research project "Il credito agrario in Albania, esperienze e prospettive", in collaborazione con Agricultural University of Tirana, nell'ambito dell'Accordo di Cooperazione Scientifica e Tecnologica 2005-2007 tra il Governo della Repubblica Italiana ed il Governo della Repubblica di Albani