Skopje, 12 January- After 15 months of village meetings, trainings, awareness campaigns, negotiations and studies, Macedonia has the first real Land Consolidation Plan fully approved by the farmers of the village selected. This means that there will be new and more opportunities for the farmers to profit from their land properties as they will have better farming conditions.
“This moment represents an important achievement for Macedonia, because the small farm size and fragmentation of land ownership represent serious barriers to rural development”, says Saso Petrovski, SNV advisor who was involved in the implementation of the joint project of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Economy (MAFWE) and Dutch Government Agency for Land and Water management (DLG) called EMERALD related to land management issues in Macedonia.
The overall goal of the project was to facilitate the restructuring of agricultural holdings by reforming agricultural and rural policies.
As part of the project, three pilot areas (Taor, Gradiste and Novake ) were investigated for land consolidation activities. In Taor, a reparceling plan of 17 hectares agricultural land has been developed successfully. Six farmers sharing this parcel agreed to participate voluntary in land exchange, including state owned land.
According to Petrovski, the importance of such a project lies more in the experience gained and the identification of the issues during the process, because they will help the Ministry in the long run to draft a sustainable rural land development policy.
SNV was mainly engaged on field activities with farmers, assisting branch officers of MAFWE and facilitating all activities related to land consolidation. SNV Macedonia also delivered training for branch officers of the MAFWE on communication, conflict resolution and how to secure participation of the farmers in the process. SNV also provided expertise on forestry and its relation to rural development and land consolidation.
A follow up project, STIMERALD will start soon and the fruitful cooperation between MAFWE, DLG and SNV is expected to continue.
For further information, please contact Saso Petrovski at spetrovski@snvworld.org