On 16 December 2009 the final National Seminar on the project “Encouraging Macedonia’s Endeavours to Rural Land Development (EMERALD) was jointly organised by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Economy (MAFWE), the Dutch Government Service for Water and Land Management (DLG) and SNV Macedonia. The Seminar was opened by the H.E. Perica Ivanoski, Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Economy and H.E. Simone Filippini, Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Macedonia. Representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture, State Agency for Real Estate Cadastre, State Agriculture Inspectorate, universities and farmers associations attended the seminar.

The objective of the National Seminar was to present the results of the EMERALD project. As part of the EMERALD project, three pilot were developed in order to explore possibilities for land consolidation. In one of the pilots in the village of Taor, a reparceling plan has been usefully developed with active participation by local farmers which resulted into a small scale land consolidation activities. Based on experiences from the three pilots under the project it became clear that issues of unclear ownership situations, unregistered inheritance claims and pending arondation issues hamper the large scale land consolidation. In addition, the project indicated that a proper legislative framework to undertake actual land consolidation activities in the country is missing.

The Deputy Minister of Agriculture Mr. Perica Ivanoski acknowledged that fragmentation of agriculture land is one of the major obstacles for increasing productivity and competitiveness of the Macedonian agriculture sector. He indicated a strong commitment of the Ministry to address this issue and to undertake the necessary institutional and legal reform to enable enlargement of agriculture land plots through land consolidation measures. He noted that an expert working group has been established to prepare the necessary legal changes that will enable land consolidation activities. Once the necessary legal framework is in place it is expected that land consolidation projects on larger scale will be implemented in Macedonia.

“With an amount of nearly 60 billion euro the Netherlands is the second largest exporter of agricultural products in the world after the USA. As agriculture is and will remain a very important sector employing directly or indirectly about 24% of the population in Macedonia, the Netherlands sees a lot of potential for cooperation between the Dutch and the Macedonian agricultural sectors. There is large expertise and know how in the Netherlands that can be used to the advantage of both economies. However, for that potential can be used reforms are needed to increase agriculture sector productivity and to meet the EU standards in this sector”, Ambassador Filippini stated at the Seminar. The Ambassador also indicated that there is a growing interest from Dutch businesses to become active in the agriculture in Macedonia and she mentioned some of the successful Dutch investments in Macedonia such as the European Plants (producer of decorative tress) and SBW (plant tissue producer). She praised the results achieved under the EMERALD project hoping that very soon she would be able to hand out the land consolidation certificates to the first group of farmers in the village of Taor that were visionary and courageous to go through the first ever land consolidation exercise implemented in Macedonia. 

The excellent cooperation between MAFWE, DLG and SNV Macedonia initiated under the EMERALD project will continue under a follow up project STIMERALD. The STIMERALD project will start early next year and will assist MAFWE in developing land consolidation strategy and implementation of the necessary institutional and legal reforms on rural land development. Also, pilot activities will continue under the follow up project aiming at implementation of the additional land consolidation activities.