More Food Security Inspectors Required

The rise in the quality of products and products, dealt with, is considered an important step for local products to penetrate the European Union market.

Kamenica municipality mayor Stand Kastrati said this municipality has huge priority for developing agriculture, as 70 per cent of its territory is hill-mountain space. Kastrati said the awareness of citizens has been set up to invest in this field of operations, as there are about forty beneficiaries of the Ministry of Agriculture grants this year, while the previous years have been no more than eight.

The last <x0).>The budget budget for subsidies for all categories has been 9 thousand and 925 euros, meaning subsidies not only in agriculture but in all areas. What we've accomplished and we're looking at from the central level is with additional funding sharing, and in this respect, even last year, we've managed to get a fund, not enough, but at least we can say support and orientation. We as a state should reduce bureaucracy in terms of distribution of subsidies and grants”, Kastrati said.

From the Department for Agricultural Counsel operating within the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Rural Development, representative Tahir Halitaj said the ministry has drafted additional mechanisms to implement European Union standards overall. According to him, however, grant - beneficiary policies should also be adapted to small producers.

“We also appreciate that we need advisers who implement the standards; the number of advisers is limited because of the government budget and cannot even accept workers, but we have the mechanism for the Certificate of private advisers and the licensing of companies that meet us on the ground with advice”, Halitaj said.

Sabedin Kadriu, regional co-ordinator for Gjilan in AUVK, said that with the small capacities of inspectors available are trying to provide food security to citizens of this region. “As far as food safety is concerned, I said at the outset, we're making the impossible possible, but with what capacity we have, really [the capacity] of the labor force that we actually have of inspectors, [is] very small”, he said.

This debate on agricultural activity in Kosovo developed under the “Communication Support Project in the European Integration Process”, which is financed by the European Union's office in Kosovo in co-operation with the Ministry of European Integrations.