Author: Gëzim Hilaj
Musa Hila, 58 years old, a resident of the "Malzi" Administrative Unit of Kukës, in 1992 planted 2 hectares of land with corn and beans and 1 and a half dynym of watermelon. However, this year he managed to plant only 5 dynym, mainly with wheat due to financial difficulties and the lack of information about the applications that are carried out online at the Agency for Agricultural and Rural Development (AZHBR), which has also prevented the benefit of subsidies by the Ministry of Agriculture. Trau in Kalimash is an added financial burden even when agricultural tools are transported as cargo.
"I bought the 8 million old lek tractor only thanks to the children from emigration. It's no wonder that we have support from the government," says Hila, adding that he paid the tax for his agricultural vehicle on the National Road.
"In the Albanian border, in addition to the car I was transporting the tractor with, they charged me an additional 690 lek for the tractor I was carrying. This is absurd," he said.
Agriculture provides work for the vast majority of the population in the "Malzi" Administrative Unit of Kukës, while the non-agricultural private sector has a low impact on overall employment.
This unit has 180 hectares of agricultural land and land, 494 hectares of non-productive land and 1323 hectares of barren land. The "Farmer's Window" under AZHBR offers Services to farmers, information on applications, access to financing, but the farmers of these villages of Kukës do not benefit from the support schemes. The farmers of Malziu in Kukës buy the agricultural tools, the seed for sowing the land and the nutrients for the plants with their own money.
According to the administrative officer at the Administrative Unit, Kujtim Beqiri, many residents do not benefit from the AZHBR support schemes as a result of the failure to register their lands at the Real Estate Registration Office based on Law No. 20/2020 , and the lack of a farmer's card. The two villages, Gdheshtë and Pistë, do not have a single meter of registered land. "In the Malzi Administrative Unit, applying for oil has encountered difficulties because they do not own the land and the plots are small, 1 dunym, 500 meters. The number of farmers who have land is small. But farmers have not registered all their hectares, because they did not want this to prevent them from benefiting from economic assistance ," explains Beqiri. "There is land that has remained registered in the names of fathers who have died ," he concludes.
After a request for information addressed to the Agency for Agricultural and Rural Development on the number of farmers who benefit from national support schemes in the Municipality of Kukës, the latter responded that there are a total of 149 potential applications that can benefit from funds from the state budget.
"Based on the lists of applications announced on the official website of AZHBR, in which the financing line for each of the measures is also set, we inform you that potential applications that can benefit from funds from the state budget are as follows :
- There are 98 applications for the support measure for basic livestock herds;
- There are 50 applications for the support measure of parks with beehives;
- For the amount of organic farms, there is 1 application".
In the draft law "On the 2021 State Budget", the Minister of Finance and Economy, Anila Denaj, also presented the scheme for the economic development of agriculture , where she stated: "Agriculture will continue to benefit in real terms from 0.8% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) for the period 2021-2023. The number of beneficiaries from the scheme of support measures in agriculture is increasing."
For the economic expert in Kukës, Sabah Gaxha, the farmers do not meet the AZHBR criteria, but the subsidies for those farmers are not economically sufficient. "The main reason why there are few applications is because one of the criteria set by the AZHBR is land ownership. In Kukës, farmers have land, but they do not have papers. They cannot meet the conditions set by the AZHBR. In the last meetings I attended at the AZHBR, livestock farmers who have over 100 heads of small livestock are concerned because the Ministry of Agriculture subsidizes them very little with about 500 thousand old lek per subject. Keeping 100 heads of livestock has economic costs, and the AZHBR subsidies are not enough. The fact that there are very few livestock farmers in Kukës is also due to the fees they pay to the state. The fee for registration and vaccination is approximately 5200 old lek per head ," Gaxha articulates, while adding that the funds provided by the state budget for Agriculture are small compared to the other two countries in the Region.
"Other countries in the region have more financial support for agriculture than we do, for example: Macedonia and Kosovo have more than Albania," explains Gaxha.
Young people leaving the land
The director of AZHBR, Frida Krifca, in 2020, emphasized that a new mentality is needed for agriculture. According to her, the new generation should be educated with love for agriculture. But her appeal seems to have fallen on "deaf ears" in the villages of Kukës. According to the data provided by the Kukës Civil Registry in the Administrative Unit "Malzi" from 1989 to 2021, the number of residents has decreased by 50%. According to residents, this decrease in population has come as a result of the emigration of young people to the countries of the European Union, Great Britain or urban areas.
With a mass emigration of young people, the only way to keep alive the passion of Malian farmers for tilling the land has been income from remittances.
"A big problem is the departure of young people. Agriculture needs workers. In our area, there are only old people at home. If we didn't have the money that children bring us from abroad, I don't know how we would continue to cover the costs of planting the land," concludes Musa Hila.
The Labor Offices in Kukës also show the increasing trend of job requests from young people aged 15-29 towards professions as far away as possible from Agriculture. In response to a request for information from the National Employment and Skills Agency in Kukës, the institution responded that “The most sought-after professions by young people registered at the Kukës Labor Office are as follows: nurse; teacher; other service worker; social work and security”.
The phenomenon of the departure of young people from these villages of Kukës can also be observed from the data provided by the Kukës Local Education Office, where the number of students of the 9-year cycle in 2020 has decreased by 73 percent compared to 2005.
The student with the initials SB, 14 years old, is in the 9th grade at the United Secondary School “Shemri”. He is worried about the departure of his peers in these villages. “Students have always left our area, continuing their education in other places. Many friends have left, not only from my class, but also from other classes”.
Even the number of students in the secondary cycle continues to decrease for these villages that provide income for living from agriculture and remittances. The year 2019 had only 49 students in secondary education, the year with the fewest students since 2006.
In the tenth grade at the school of this Administrative Unit, the student with the initials JM dwells on demographic problems: “Many students who I had friends with have left my country and many continue to leave the country. We all have the idea of leaving the village. Very soon this entire Administrative Unit will be abandoned, all the people will leave”. JM himself sees the same solution, following the trend of other young people leaving in his country. “I wanted to leave for Germany to earn money. I see many people who have graduated from high school in my country, and have not been able to find a job.”
The ministry subsidizes oil, but it is bought by the barrel
On the one hand, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development has stated that the process of distributing free oil to all farmers starts on January 15 of this year (2021) and the MARD is on its feet to enable the successful implementation of this promise that the government has made to the farmer. The MARD, when asked whether oil for these small farmers of this municipality has undergone a price reduction and how much this reduction was, replied: “According to point 6, Chapter II, of the Instruction of the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development No. 1, dated 8.1.2021 “On the criteria, procedures and method of administration of the oil support scheme for agriculture”, as amended, the benefit of the amount of free oil for the cultivated area is as follows:
- a) Applicants with an area of up to 10 ha, benefit from 100% of the amount of oil according to the norms defined in Annex 3, attached to this instruction; b) Applicants with an area over 10 ha, for an area over 10 ha, receive the amount of oil with corrected/reduced norms when the amount of available oil does not meet all the demand for these areas."
On the other hand, farmers in the village of Mgullë in Kukës not only do not get oil for free, but they buy it on the black market. Arjan Çiku, the son of a small farmer, says that they do not get oil through an oil card because there is also a lack of a fuel supply for agricultural vehicles in the center of the village. “They get oil from a store with 5-liter cans because we do not have a gas station. We have not had any help from the government for this problem. We buy a 5-liter can of oil for 750 new lekë,” Arjani claims.
Qemal Memishaj, responsible for the Kukës Agriculture Directorate, in an interview for RTSH Kukësi emphasized that the limited number of oil cards is a result of the lack of ownership of the land. "Currently, until the day we spoke, about 40 farmers have received the Oil card. We have 20 cards that will be distributed in two or three days and the remaining part are about 25 farmers who will receive the oil cards. The limited number of farmers is a result of the lack of ownership documents over the land," Memishaj explains.
The land is still plowed and planted by horse
The collapse of a bridge that has been holding hostage 10 families of farmers from the village of Mgullë since last winter, who used this bridge to transport vehicles, agricultural products and livestock. According to them, local institutions are not interested in their livelihood in the village. "Now that the river level drops in the summer, we have managed to cross the river with agricultural vehicles, but this is a dangerous thing, because the river can take down the agricultural vehicles, economically damaging our families who have invested in them," says Çiku.
The same problem is observed with the bridge that connects the village of Petkaj with the houses and lands on the other side of the village. Ram Skaci has been working and planting his land and that of several other villages on horseback for 15 years. The only way to his house is a degraded cable-stayed bridge, which shakes when you walk on it. The lack of this bridge has forced him to continue working the land with animals. "I work the land with a plow, I have nothing to do. An engineer from the Municipality came, but they are not building the bridge because there is only one house across this bridge. I myself am not able to do it ," Skaci emphasizes.
The lack of investments in infrastructure, the residents' ignorance of the existing subsidies for agriculture and the impossibility of benefiting from them, as well as the lack of perspective and the abandonment of the area by the younger generation, has caused the residents of an entire area in Kukës to abandon the main means of living and see the future away from their homes, in the main cities of Albania, or even in emigration.
