The Farmer’s Portal, the latest digital novelty designed to assist farmers, to simplify and streamline procedures for the farmers’ support by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, was revealed today at an expanded meeting with farmers, producers and agriculture sector workers, an event attended also by the Prime Minister Edi Rama and the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Frida Krifca.
The online portal is a window of transparency devised to provide real-time information about market, prices, food analysis, active agriculture support schemes and the funding instruments, veterinary care, offer of agricultural pharmacies, agricultural collection operators, potential agricultural land area for lease, the existing legislation and all sorts of information to help farmers during their daily activities.
A group of around 40 employees at agriculture and rural development offices across Albania will gather daily and complete information about the wholesale agriculture markets in 12 districts across the country, registering the wholesale market prices on a daily basis.
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Prime Minister Edi Rama: Hello everyone and trust me that by saying it is a real pleasure today that this process, finalized with this portal, comes at the moment when it is shared with all of you and with all the farmers, it is not just a word of courtesy that must be said, but it is the expression of a special satisfaction.
I am particularly pleased about this because information is what we all need most in this era, because information is what makes the difference continuously in the rural development sector.
We are going through an intermediate stage between the latter and what we should aim for, primarily capacity building, enhancing human capital, and increasing the ability to absorb and process information.
Information would also boost capacities and skills to gain access to various support and funding schemes, including the government and the EU agriculture support programmes, as well as the donors’ funding and so on, and I’m absolutely convinced that the reason you and many others like you, though not everyone of you, have stood out in this phase of the country’s rural development, it is because you have improved your capacity to identify and figure out your needs for you to take the next step.
What we are doing today is a crucial process as it represents an immensely important step and I am confident that all of those who will consider this portal as such and all of those who will access and use the farmer’s portal will reap the benefits, as they will become independent from all the turns, obstacles, impossibilities or even from disinformation, distortion of facts that does not always happen intentionally.
They will gain independence by having a real-time database of all components of rural development, to work with that database, to study and to learn from that database.
Most importantly, information will also help us to quickly overcome this intermediary stage between the past and the future.
This portal will help whoever wishes to understand, it will be very easy to understand. Everyone wishing to be informed, they will be very easily informed. Whoever wants to give answers to these dilemmas, how to do this and how to do that, will find it very easy.
The third element that needs to be addressed today is the element of price transparency.
We have witnessed the difficult situations farmers have been through; we have come across stories about abuses by some agricultural collection operators and others. This portal will provide full and complete price transparency on a daily basis and every farmer will have the opportunity to access the platform to check prices and none of the collection operators will be able to take advantage and therefore a different kind of partnership will be built between farmers and the agricultural collection agencies.
Other sections of the portal will include farm subsidies, projects and support schemes. The portal will provide the opportunity to explore ways how to gain funding, support and subsidies, and look at the previous success stories of farmers who have already benefited funds, because funds earmarked for agriculture will gradually decrease, funding that is distributed regardless of what you do and will always be more and more funding depending on what you do.
We are about to finalize a record pay rise, with the average salary to jump to 900 euros, almost twice as high as the current average monthly pay for the public administration employees. The private sector has started to follow suit, yet it is still insufficient, while time runs very fast in this regard.
Thank you very much!