Evaluation of the USAID-Kosovo SME and Agriculture - Economic ...

Development Associates, Inc.The lack of access to credit curtails expansion in the fruit tree orchard sub-sector. There isconsiderable interest in expanding existing orchard land and also in bringing new lands intoproduction. However, it is costly to initiate new orchards given the high cost of high qualityseedlings, fencing and irrigation. Therefore, expansion in this sub-sector will probably be slowand extended over a long period.Another major constraint to fruit tree production is the issue of privatizing SOE lands that areparticularly suited to orchard plantings so that farmers can increase their holdings. This issue isdiscussed elsewhere in the evaluation.4. Have activities been well coordinated with other donors and other USAID projects andfocused on achieving mutually agreed objectives, economically and efficiently?The project’s relationship with the Swiss funded NGO “InterCooperation” has been verybeneficial to the SEEDS project’s work with participating farmers. There have been ongoingexchanges of trainings and discussions of marketing issues. InterCooperation will continueoperating at least until 2006, which will allow for the continuing dissemination of technologies.The SEEDS project might consider encouraging them to continue working with some of theparticipating farmers following the termination of the SEEDS project.Collaboration with farmer associations, other projects and processors has been ongoing from thebeginning of the project. The project is working with six Farmer Associations, three of which arenewly formed and three of which are pre-existing organizations. One of the latter is actually aFarmer Association formed around a seedling nursery. During the first year of the project, about25% of staff time was devoted to working with the Farmer Associations. In the final 8 months ofthe project, it is estimated that this will increase to about a third.There are/were 80 orchard farmers participating in the project, with about 57 of them active atthe time of the evaluation. There are another 123 farmers that are loosely connected with theproject’s activities. All of these farmers are members of the seven Farmer Associations that theproject is working with at present. The total number of orchard farmers in the entire project areais not known but the percent of orchard farmers who are members of a Farmer Association is nodoubt very high.The project has been in regular contact with three micro-credit organizations, AFK, FINCA, andPro-Credit, trying to encourage them to offer a loan program to qualified fruit orchard farmers.The project has attempted to serve as an intermediary for participating farmers that are interestedin borrowing funds to increase their plantings. However, it is clear that these micro-financeinstitutions do not have lending programs to serve these small and medium sized orchardoperations that need 3-5 years financing to establish new plantings. Nevertheless, the projectwill continue the dialog with these institutions and continue the information flow with thefarmers.5. Have activities been coordinated effectively between KBS and SEEDS to takeadvantage of economic opportunities in farm production and value added processing?One of the most important efforts was to have been in collaboration with KBS and one or moreprocessors of fruit products. The PROGRES Company was to have been a key player in thisEvaluation of the USAID/Kosovo SME 118 May 2004and Agriculture/Agribusiness ProgramsVolume I