Action Plan of "Year of Agriculture" Approved with Quarterly Lag

On April 3 President Ilham Aliyev with a quarterly delay approved a plan of action to implement his own January order that declared 2015 the "Year of Agriculture".

The government will undertake financing activities under the action plan and solve other issues arising from the order. Only nine months are given for the implementation of the almost yearly program and the important winter period was missed.

The order was made on January 12, but the "Year of Agriculture" was announced at the end of 2014. This decision was dictated by the need to accelerate the development of agriculture and its modernization, to ensure systematic and comprehensive approach to solving the existing problems in the agricultural sector, as well as a profitable attraction of ​​administrative and financial resources of the state to this area.

Who is to blame for the delayed approval of the action plan is not reported, but it is known that the Cabinet and the Ministry of Agriculture were given one month for its preparation. -0--

As reported by Turan, in 2014 the volume of agricultural products in Azerbaijan totaled 5,225,800,000 AZN in actual prices. In the comparable figures the volume decreased by 2.6%, while production in plant cultivation reduced by 8.3%, despite support of the state. The specialists connect this tendency not only with unfavorable weather conditions, but also with low profitability of farms. As a result of that last year gross product of plant cultivation was behind the cattle breeding.

Meat manufacture in live weight increased by 1.7%, milk (1,855,600 tons) – 3.3%, eggs (1,562,700,000 pieces) – 11.5%. Azerbaijan has even started exporting meat (table).

Manufacture of grain and leguminous cultures decrease by 12.7%, 444,000 tons less wheat was harvested than in 2013.

Meat manufacture in live weight increased by 1.7%, milk (1,855,600 tons) – 3.3%, eggs (1,562,700,000 pieces) – 11.5%. Azerbaijan has even started exporting meat (table).

Manufacture of grain and leguminous cultures decrease by 12.7%, 444,000 tons less wheat was harvested than in 2013.

There was decline of almost all products of plant growing. The decline in vegetable growing constituted 3.9%, while fruit growing – 0.5%. The potato production dropped from 992,800 tons in 2013 to 758,500 tons. The harvest of watermelons and melons increased (441,000 tons, or +2.6%). This partially explains why our farmers could not take advantage of the Russian market in the middle of the year and occupy their niche in it. But in any case it would have faced customs barriers on our side, notes Turan.

It is clear that situation in this very perspective sector should be changed. The main problem here is labor productivity. It is clear that our country is behind the European Union in this index about 40 times. 4.7% population of the EU is involved in the agrarian sector, while in Azerbaijan – 40% of able-bodied population. The reason is clear development of agriculture in our country has almost always been extensive and it is not easy to change. However, the problem is a low culture of farmers. Farmers are sandwiches between two millstones – executive authorities and big capital, which has come to the agrarian processing sector and started creating agrarian holdings.

Being aware of this situation, President announced 2015 Year of Agriculture. The government has adopted the third program of regional development till 2018. There are hopes that the program could stir up the sector.

As we can see, only upgrade of infrastructure of the village and most likely with involvement of foreign investments and technologies will help to change the situation. During so many years of development only the processing sectors have foreign capital and technologies, but even they have limitations. Hardly anybody could explain why the idea to create big farmer cooperatives has failed. Agroleasing has absolutely discredited itself last year, they have let entire problem drop. President himself complains about embezzlement of subsidies to the agrarian sector and unfair distribution of funds of the National Fund for Entrepreneurship Support. Municipalities or rural communities could become support of the state. Part of the initiatives in this sector must come from the bottom up.

The government, possibly, stakes at creation of big agrarian holdings and considers farms unsustainable. But then this should be announced. There is still no declared policy in this sector yet.

The number of problems accumulated in this sector is critical. The most urgent problem is salinity. But who can explain why the problem has not been solved till now with such a volume of irrigation works. Last year was interesting, because having lost part of its import, Russia has offered to create joint venture between Russian and Azerbaijani companies to ensure free import of Azerbaijani agrarian products to Russia. This was a chance for our farmers to break into a big market to occupy a niche there. But thing has happened, except growth of export of apples to Russia.

At the end of last year Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on the measures to improve management of the agrarian sector and accelerate the institutional reforms envisaging creation of agrarian parks in the country. The Ministry of Agriculture has offered to involve Netherlands into creation of the agrarian parks and has even conducted talks. But one cannot see Dutch farmers on the horizon. This has happened before: the idea is good, but there are no results. For decades the government has been discussing the necessity of the Agrobank, but where is it? The idea to insure agricultural credits for the farmer to get access to the funds has not been developed. The term movable property is introduced only now to expand the legislative basis for the credits.

In other words, the government must be actively involved in the work to restore agrarian sector  not letting go any serious problem. Possibly, all problems of this sector have started from a simple substitution: the term development of villages was substituted by the abstract term development of the agrarian sector, Turan notes.--0—