Under the the EU-funded project 'Development and Implementation of Agri-environmental measures', a new financial support is being available to Macedonian farmers, who in the course of a production process take care for protecting the environment.  

"The ecology-friendly agricultural production will protect the environment, preserve natural resources - water, soil and genetic diversification - and offer citizens healthy food," Ljupco Dimovski, Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Economy, said Tuesday at the project's closing conference.

The project's overall objective was to provide technical assistance to Macedonia's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Economy (MAFWE) and the Agency for Financial Support of Agriculture and Rural Development (AFSARD) in order to strengthen the national and regional capabilities that are required to tackle the priorities of EU alignment, market oriented reforms and development in the sector - focusing in particular on the development of Agri-environmental measures. 

The Agri-environment programme is built on a voluntary principle, which means that the success of the programme depends not only on well designed measures of the programme itself, but also on the farmers acceptance of the measures offered and the willingness of the regional/local groups/organizations involved to support the application process.   The project provided training, workshops and open meetings for the successful implementation of AEM.   

The EU-funded project "Development and Implementation of Agri-environmental measures" started on November 2010, with a budget of almost EUR700.000 and finalised its activities after 18 months.  This project was implemented by the Consortium led by ADT Projekt GmbH from Germany in association with LWK (Germany), GZC (Slovenia) and GISS d.o.o. (Slovenia) with a team of international and local experts.