Local farms and farmers in Maminas, Municipality of Shijak, are consistently boosting production capacities through their hard work and the support from the Agricultural and Rural Development Agency (ARDA), which, thanks to the IPARD Programme, is the farmers’ project to expand and grow their activity. Prime Minister Edi Rama, accompanied by ARDA Director General Frida Krifca, today visited one of the local farms, which thanks to the ARDA support through the IPARD II Programme is building a modern collection centre, featuring storage capacity on refrigeration units that meet highest European standards for fruits and vegetable collection, storage and processing.
The company “Kronos” plans to transform its greenhouses into agritourism attractions, where local and foreign visitors can be familiarized with the collection and processing processes of the locally-grown fresh produce. “The company is introducing innovative solutions to greenhouse eco-friendly agricultural glass greenhouses. Entire produce is sold at Tirana markets and the goal is to develop fruit and on-site vegetables processing capacities at the collection centre. The collection centre, featuring two refrigerated storage rooms, will process entire greenhouse grown products, as well as products from local farmers. It is about a 3000-square meters facility. This is a model farm and the owners plan to build an agritourism business with the greenhouses being open to the public and visitors for them to see products processing for themselves,” ARDA Director Frida Krifca said.
Once the investment completes, a total of 250 local farmers will collect their produce at this centre. “The entire work with the collection centres is a transformative process as it has already created a completely new platform for agriculture and it offers a lot of incentives to farmers to bring their products to the collection centre,” the Premier said.
ARDA has provided financial support to projects on building 53 collection centres throughout the country with the aim of increasing the storage and processing capacities of agricultural products. “Through the collection centres, farmers are learning to join their forces, cooperate, and sell together and a new dynamic is being created in the market,” Krifca said.
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The government head Rama also visited another farm in Maminas, to closely see the new greenhouses built by the company “Agro-Koni”, which with the support of ARDA, through the IPARD II Program, has built an ultramodern greenhouse for the production of vegetable seedlings growing.
Ruzhdi and his son run this farm, which supplies seedlings to farmers throughout Albania. However, plant grafting is the innovation as a result of cooperation between generations. “The most important process is a new process we have recently launched, it is the grafting of plants.
Rruzhdi spoke about the contemporary techniques applied in this greenhouse for plant grafting, a technology that they intend to further modernize with the support of ARDA.
He said that there are about 3 thousand farmers all over Albania who are supplied with high quality seedlings from this greenhouse.
“Agro Koni” deals with the vegetable seedlings growing from the starting point of production to exports. We are currently at the site where the seedlings grow, the existing greenhouses. We have assisted the company with building the new high-tech greenhouse. Here are all sorts of seedlings that supply farmers all over Albania,” ARDA Director Krifca said.
Krifca said that the investment has exceeded ALL 60 million and is supported with 60% grant. “He received a 10% payment in advance and the rest once the greenhouse is completed,” she said.
Krifca said EUR 29 million have been injected for primary production at the greenhouses. “It is important to increase the surface area of greenhouses in order to boost processing,” she said.
On his part, PM Rama pointed out the fact that government fully support farmers and their business projects.
