UNHCR Photo

The near-destruction of Kosovo's agricultural sector, once the key component of the province's economy, was a major consequence of the conflict. Rural populations were displaced, crops and machinery were either destroyed or seriously damaged, and the number of livestock fell by more than half. The rural economy sank to near-subsistence level, dependent on family farming of small units.

To restart agricultural activities in Kosovo, UNMIK and its partners, such as the World Food Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and several non-governmental organizations (NGOs), first focussed their efforts on assisting the return of displaced peasants to their villages, restoring housing, supplying fertilizers and seeds, and repairing farm machinery. With a budget of DM 8 million -- supported by FAO, the European Union and bilateral donors -- the emergency assistance programme helped in the planting of some 78,000 hectares of wheat, the survival of about 90 per cent of livestock over the harsh winter months, and in preparing the land for planting maize, beans, potatoes, vegetables and other spring crops. Some 20,000 tonnes of fertilizers were supplied and about 3,500 tractors and 350 combines were repaired with the assistance of Sweden, Luxembourg and NGOs.

As a result, the state of Kosovo's agriculture has improved significantly compared with the previous year. However, much remains to be done. "It is important and necessary to move from the emergency assistance stage to providing broader, deeper and more specific support to make agriculture self-sustainable and profitable", says Kosovo: Reconstruction 2000, the interim administration's first comprehensive and integrated plan for Kosovo's social and economy recovery. This requires identifying needs and priorities better, formulating a reconstruction programme, and obtaining financial and other resources for its implementation.

Current priorities include improving productivity and food security, assisting farmers in rebuilding their capital assets, such as livestock, machinery, equipment and buildings, enabling the private sector to resume its primary role in agricultural production and supply, and ensuring the start-up of rural financial services for small farms, households and other micro-enterprises. Other key tasks are rehabilitating and reorganizing public irrigation schemes, as well as improving programme management and external assistance coordination. The recently created JIAS Department of Agriculture provides the overall coordination and institutional framework for agricultural activities.

Projects include those funded by the French Government and the European Union to set up micro-credit rural schemes and revitalize the private cooperative sector.

In another project funded by the Union, a substantial amount of fertilizers will be made available locally through dealers, reactivating the marketing system. The Union will then collect revenues from sales and use them in the second phase of the micro-credit scheme. "In the immediate future, we will have to see that more donor resources are going into the production sector, including agriculture", says John Pell, Agricultural Policy Adviser in the Department of Reconstruction. "There is a big absorptive capacity there. In the first instance, we are talking about getting funds into agro-business, into the distribution, production, processing and marketing systems. The local entrepreneurs are already there, so we will have to work out a scheme tapping most effectively into their initiative and the capacity of socially-owned enterprises. The issue is how to move away from the subsistence level, produce more at lesser cost and fully meet consumer demand. There is also a question of finding new markets or regaining access to old ones, such as Croatia and the rest of the former Yugoslavia, which are currently not accessible. But this will be a five-year process, not a one-year task. Now we have to attract more investments and organize production."

Further steps are envisaged in Kosovo's Reconstruction Programme from a longer-term perspective, up to 2010. Various initiatives will be taken to redirect rural economic activities towards developing an agricultural industry that is able to compete internationally, with a smaller and more productive workforce, while generating a broad range of non-farm activities to provide alternative employment and incomes for a large section of rural population. But this will be impossible unless the more immediate challenges are successfully met.