“The agriculture census will play a crucial role in the future determination of the farming and transport programmes as well as the promotion of agricultural products, rural development, manufacturing practices, new technologies and subsidy programmes,” says INSTAT director
TIRANA, March 26 – The number of agricultural holdings in Albania during the past fourteen years has declined by 30 percent, according to preliminary findings of an agriculture census conducted by state Institute of Statistics in 2012. There were 324,013 agricultural holdings in 2012 compared to 466,809 back in 1998 when INSTAT conducted the last agricultural census.
The survey shows 70 percent of farms are engaged in livestock breeding, 99.77 percent of them have agricultural land and 70 percent are mixed-farming holdings.
The southwestern region of Fier has the biggest number of agricultural holdings with 52,504, followed by Elbasan and Tirana with 43,640 and 41,531 respectively. The regions of Gjirokastra and Kukes have the smallest number of holdings with 9,768 10,368 respectively.
“The agriculture census will play a crucial role in the future determination of the farming and transport programmes as well as the promotion of agricultural products, rural development, manufacturing practices, new technologies and subsidy programmes. The census will establish special registers on crops and livestock providing detailed data at a local, regional and national level,” said Ines Nurja, the director of INSTAT.
The census was financially supported by the Albanian government, the EU Delegation in Tirana and the Swedish government through SIDA.
Data on tenure forms, employment, machinery, crop and livestock production and trade, fertilizers and irrigation are included in the census whose detailed data will be published in the second half of 2013. Typical structural agricultural data that are collected are the size of the farm, land use, number of livestock, irrigation, labour force.
Back in 1998, some 466,809 private and public holdings were identified in 2,968 villages, 368 communes/municipalities, 36 districts and 12 prefectures. The average farm size was only 1.17 hectares with an average of 3 plots per farm. Seventy percent of farms had less than 1.5 ha of land. Albania is a mountainous country and only about 32 percent (702,000 hectares) of its area is cultivated, and another 425,000 hectares are in pasture with the fragmentation of the agricultural land being a major barrier for agricultural development.
Fourteen years after the last census of agricultural economic units, the country’s state statistical institute, INSTAT, and the Ministry of Interior conducted in October 2012 a new nationwide campaign to register all agricultural and livestock units.
Some 3,500 pollsters and more than 800 supervisors were engaged in the three-week campaign. In 2012, INSTAT published data on the housing and population census and non-agricultural enterprises.
Ines Nurja, the director of INSTAT, says the census will provide an accurate database on agriculture. Each piece of land more than 200 m2 is part of the survey.
The census will also help establish an updated farm register in order to produce reliable agriculture statistics in line with EU requirements that will contribute to improvement of the National Account System in Albania and the establishment of a regular system of sample-based farm surveys.
The general census of agricultural economic units back in 1998 enabled INSTAT to create then an accurate overview on the sector structure. However, lack of other ongoing statistical activities resulted in the lack of outcomes to measure development. Insufficient information on structures of agricultural holdings, production and distribution of agricultural and livestock products, and the periodical changes of livestock heads are some of the issues statistics on agriculture currently face, says the European Commission.
Agriculture
Data show the agricultural sector generates about 18.5 percent of GDP and 48.3 percent of total employment, being the largest employer. This important sector of the Albanian economy remains the least government-funded among the other four priority sectors of education, health, defence, and transport.
All people living in rural areas and possessing land in Albania are automatically calculated as self-employed in the agricultural sector.
The Albanian government spends only 0.5 percent of the GDP on agriculture while credit to the agricultural sector represents only 1.3 percent of total credit to businesses, according to central bank data.
Around 500,000 people work in agriculture, of whom 55 percent are full time and 45 percent part time. “Labour productivity in agriculture is only 30% of labour productivity in the rest of the Albanian economy and 20 percent of the EU labour productivity in agriculture. More than 50 percent of the total population live in the rural areas where agriculture is the main economic activity,” says the European Commission in its latest report on Albania.
Albania is the most agriculture-oriented country in the Western Balkans. The share of agriculture in value added is around or below 10 per cent in all the other Western Balkan countries expect for Macedonia with its share somewhat higher than 11 percent.
Despite the progress made during the last years, overall agricultural productivity in Albania is lower than in the agricultural sectors of its neighbours and the rest of Europe and lower than the average of the Albania’s economy as shown by the sector’s higher share in terms of employment than in terms of value added..
Experts say the small size of farms, lack of appropriate management of land and agricultural infrastructure and technology make the Albanian agricultural sector more problematic compared to other countries in the region. Agricultural cooperatives are now legally recognized as joint enterprises created on a voluntary basis, giving the Albanian farmers more opportunities to maximize their production and benefit more in funding from government and financial institutions.
Agricultural land (about 1.1 million ha) covers about 39 per cent of the surface of Albania, of which 699,000 ha or 63 per cent is arable land and area suited to permanents crops (fruit trees) and the rest is forest area. Livestock is the most important agricultural subsector in Albania, representing about 52 per cent of the total value of the agriculture production in 2011, followed by field crops with about 31 per cent and then fruit trees with about 17 per cent, according to FAO.
FDI stock in agriculture represented only 0.3 per cent of the total FDI stock in Albania in 2010, and 2.1 per cent in food, beverages and tobacco manufacturing. Experts suggest that when formulating its policies towards FDI in agribusiness, including agriculture and related processing and service activities, government needs to focus on the development impact of such FDI, and not its volume, which is expected to remain limited.
