UNMIK RADIO

UNDP CO-PERATIVES

By Birol Urcan

Hello and welcome from UNMIK Radio

Rexhep Limani is a farmer from Shtimje. Farming is his business for 10 years.

All this time Rexhep worked alone. He hired workers to help out in the glasshouse, but never cooperated with other farmers.

This lasted until 2 years ago when he with some of his colleague-farmers started thinking of founding a co-operative.

However, they only managed to achieve their plan in April this year with the help of UNDP, the United Nations Development Program.

“We were 17 members which so far were working alone.

now since we have joined we will have some benefits:

firstly with row material ,we will buy it together in big amounts, we will organize the sale of the products together

Then we will become more interesting for the market.

Since last year UNDP helped found 5 such co-operatives:

3 in Srbica/Skenderaj and 2 in Shtimje.

Virtyt Gacaferri Team leader for Advocacy and communications says that :UNDP invested around 70.000 euros .

With this money they arranged office equipment for the co-operatives and helped train it’s newly appointed management.

“on the field of agro culture we choose the project of cooperatives, because this is one of the best ways to help to farmers to work together and get out of poverty .

in our human development report it was seen that poverty is much higher on rural areas and agro culture is one the ways to take these people out of poverty “

Halim Baftiu planted 2000 apple saplings on his field just outside of Shtimje.

Halim’s family has been farming this land for generations so to him agriculture is a family tradition.

Recently Halim joined a cooperative as he thinks there’s a great benefit in working together with other farmers.

we in our village for example have 2 or 3 hectares of land

but each of us has all the agro cultural equipment

with the cooperative, we could with less tractors and other agro cultural equipment do the same job in an easier way ”

UNDP organized an agricultural fair in Shtimje took place a few weeks ago as part of the cooperatives-project.

It’s aim was to promote the products of the 5 new co-operatives.

Rexhep Limani who also was in th fair with the cooperative hopes that mutual support among farmers and events like the fair will help the members of his cooperation to develop their businesses

“well some of the members of our cooperative are very developed, but we also have some that are

the initial faze will be to develop these members and to invest on production capacities ,we also think about Export ,having in mind that Kosovar Market is not so big

According to the Ministry of agriculture Kosovo had 156 agricultural cooperatives before the war,

today there are only 13 such initiatives.

The ministry supports these cooperatives and hopes to help increase the number of them.

But according to Binak Krasniqi the head of rural development on this department the ministry has limited resources .

“on technical aspect it depends ,…cause you know how little is Kosovar Budget as it concerns agro culture

but we try to get fundings from different programs which will help cooperatives

and will bring back the cooperatives but not as they were before

but cooperatives as unification of farmers ,or service to the farmers for better development”

As cooperatives are of great help to individual farmers and facilitate the development of the agricultural sector as a whole, projects like this – even if they are small scale – may mean a brighter future for Kosovo’s rural areas.