Agriculture in Albania

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Agriculture in Albania employs 47.8% of the population and about 24.31% of the land is used for agricultural purposes. Agriculture contributes to 18.9% of the country's GDP. Domestic farm products accounted for 63% of household expenditures and 25% of exports in 1990.

History

In the 1970s and 1980s, the Enver Hoxha regime created the world's most strictly controlled and isolated farm sector. The government invested in industry at the primary sector's expense, and food output fell short of the needs of the rapidly increasing population. The government reduced the size of personal plots, collectivized livestock, and forbid peasants from marketing their produce privately. By the early 1990s, the farms were no longer supplying enough food to urban areas and failing to meet the needs for raw materials in factories. The new regime responded by enabling land privatization and free-market measures.

Land use and organization

Land use

Irrigation, desalination, terracing of highlands, and drainage of marshes, often carried out by forced labor, added to the country's cultivable land after 1945. Large population increases reduced the amount of cultivable land per capita by 35% between 1950 and 1987, and by 20% between 1980 and 1988. About 423,000 hectares were irrigated in 1991, up from about 39,300 hectares in 1950. The economic disruptions of the early 1990s left only about 40% of the irrigation system functional and 20% in complete disrepair. Albania also invested substantially in imported Dutch greenhouses during its drive for food self-sufficiency.

Land organization after World War II to 1991

In 1967, the country's only forms of agricultural production were state farms, collective farms, and personal plots granted to members of collective farms. The first Albanian state farm grew out of a large experimental farm set up by Italian colonists in the 1930s. After World War II, the government merged small farms into state farms. There were 216 state farms, which still controlled 24% of the arable land in 1991. The state farms received the best land and equipment and a large proportion amount of investment money.

Land organization 1991-present

Albanian farmers outside Peshkopi

In July 1991, the government enacted a law that removed old property claims and regulated redistribution of farmland. The law granted landownership rights to members of the former collective farms and their households without requiring compensation, and also granted land-use rights up to 0.4 hectares to other qualifying residents. The law banned land sales and leases, thereby blocking voluntary consolidation of tiny landholdings.

The law met especially stiff resistance in the country's mountainous northeastern regions where clans tried to stop large numbers of postwar immigrants from gaining title to their land. Local officials also impeded the reform process. Under the land-distribution program, Albania's agricultural sector gained about 380,000 small family farms averaging about 1.4 hectares in size. Western economists estimated that 35% of the new farms would not be economically viable. The government amended the land law to provide for income support of farmers in mountainous areas.

The land reform did not account for the 216 state farms and their 155,000 employees, who accounted for about 20% of the agricultural labor force and controlled 24% of the arable land. State farms contributed about 30% of the value of the country's agricultural output. The state farms' yields were about third more than cooperative farms because the state farms benefited from richer soils, more mechanization, easier access to farm services, government finance, and transportation. The breakdown of the communist structure dealt the state farms serious setbacks. By mid-1991 lines of authority had snapped, equipment and buildings had been plundered, and the amount of cultivated land had decreased by half. Although it planned to dissolve 60 unprofitable state farms in the mountainous northeast, the government generally spared the state farms from redistribution because their breakup would reduce urban food supplies.

Production

Farmers stacking hay in Vermosh

Before the 1990s, Albania's main food crops were wheat, corn, fruits, and vegetables; however, there was increasing attention to tobacco, olives, and oranges. Between 1989 and 1991, the country's crop structure underwent a radical transformation. A lack of demand led to steep declines in the wheat, tobacco, sugar beets, sunflowers, and cotton grown in Albania. Disputes with the government's land-privatization program, shortages of funds for seeds and machinery, and the hasty privatization of the companies that provided farmers with machinery and fertilizers also had an effect. In the first third of 1991, milk production was down 50% compared to the corresponding period in 1990, bread-grain production was down 67%, and areas sown with cotton and tobacco had decreased by 80% and 50%, respectively.

In mid-1991, 10% to 15% of Albania's cultivable land lay fallow mainly because the state enterprises were not giving small farmers seed, fertilizers, and other necessities. Transportation breakdowns and other problems continued to force farmers away from crops requiring processing, leaving wheat, sugar, and vegetable oils in short supply. However, corn, meat, egg, and vegetable production increased. Despite these grounds for optimism, domestic production in 1992 was projected to meet only about 88% of the country's need for meat, 48% for wheat, 30% for sugar, and 5% for vegetable oils.

Livestock

Goats shepherd in Vuno

A failed campaign to collectivize livestock in the late 1970s and early 1980s led to meat and dairy product shortages, and the communists retraced their steps. The regime gave animal husbandry a high priority in the Eighth Five-Year Plan (1986–90). In mid-1991, shortages of feed severely hampered livestock production and forced farmers to allocate much of their land to cultivation of forage and feed corn. The animals raised on this diet were deficient in protein and generally of poor quality. Despite the ban on food exports, about 1,000 calves, cows, sheep, and other livestock were smuggled across the Greek and Yugoslav borders each day because they lacked fodder and sought to take advantage of high prices on foreign markets.

Albania's 409,528 hectares of pastureland remained state-owned despite the land reform. The Ministry of Agriculture's eighteen pasture enterprises managed grazing lands at the district level and charged customers a seasonal fee. Ministry officials estimated that grazing fees could have to increase fourfold before the pasture enterprises could break even.

Mechanization

Faithful to Joseph Stalin's teachings on agricultural organization, Albania's communist regime allowed state farms to possess tractors but only gave collective farms access to machinery through machine tractor stations. These stations remained a cornerstone of Albania's collective agricultural sector for decades. In 1991 the 33 machine tractor stations controlled about 63% of Albania's 10,630 tractors and 25% of its 1,433 combine harvesters; state farms controlled the rest. Official inventories also listed 1,857 threshers. As the old order collapsed, the tractor stations metamorphosed into state-owned "agricultural machinery enterprises" that offered their services to peasant customers on a contractual basis. These enterprises often ignored state limitations on service charges. Some tractor drivers bought older Chinese tractors and offered their services at prices up to 40% more than those charged by the state enterprises. More than 75% of Albania's tractors were over 15 years old in 1991, and most tractors were in disrepair because plant closures had cut off supplies of spare parts.

Fertilizers

During peak years, Albania had used fertilizers less than almost any other nation in Eastern Europe. In the early 1990s the agricultural sector experienced a shortage of fertilizer, pesticides and hybrid seed. In 1989 Albanian farmers had applied about 158 kilograms of active ingredients per hectare, but the country's economic breakdown lowered the total to 135 kilograms in 1990 and 38 kilograms in 1991. A lack of currency caused fertilizer supplies to drop 80% and pesticide reserves to fall 63%. Intensive application of lindane and other pesticides, disinfectants for treating soil, and monocropping of wheat and corn had destroyed many pests' natural enemies and increased dependency on pesticides. Obsolete sorting and cleaning equipment lowered seed quality and varietal improvement was dependent on the crossing of local strains.

Forests

In the early 1990s, the thickest woodlands were in the central and northern mountain ranges. Albania’s southern half was deforested due to historic cutting of oak trees to build the merchant ships of Venice and Dubrovnik, the destruction of woodlands to create pastures, the burning of wood for fuel, and the expansion of villages onto hillsides. Albania's nine state forestry industry complexes produced an estimated 2.3 million cubic meters of wood annually between 1976 and 1988; its 28 sawmills cut about 200,000 cubic meters of wood annually between 1977 and 1988. The pulp, paper, and fiberboard industries enjoyed little competitive advantage and did considerable environmental damage. The country's high dependency on wood for heating—amounting to 100% of household energy needs in mountainous areas and over 90% in the cities in 1991—contributed to the overexploitation of forests.

Fishing

Albania's fishery industry, which was underdeveloped and poorly managed, consisted of 4 state-owned fishing enterprises, 16 aquaculture enterprises, and two shellfish enterprises. The government had little trouble privatizing all of the country's fishing vessels but anticipated difficulty in selling off the three fish canneries and the only shipyard servicing the fishing and coastal transportation fleet.

Land

The land used for farming is about 698,900 hectares, which is about 24% of the total land area. Arable land totals at about 603,700 hectares, 21% of the land area, and permanent crops total about 121,000 hectares, 4.21% of the land area; permanent pasturelands account for another 409,500 hectares, or 14.2% of the land area. More than 100,000 hectares of the cultivable land has a slope greater than 30 percent and was allocated almost entirely to tree crops, such as olives. Forests and woodlands covered more than 38% of the total land area. The soils of the coastal plain and eastern plateau are fertile, but acidic soils are predominant in the 200,000 hectares of cropland in hilly and mountainous areas.

Production and exports

The main agricultural products in Albania are tobacco, figs, olives, wheat, maize, potatoes, vegetables, fruits, sugar beets, grapes; meat, dairy products, and traditional medicine plants. Agriculture accounts for 18.9% of the GDP and a large portion of the exports.

Forestry

Albania has soils and a climate favorable to an extensive lumber industry. Many of the historic forests of Albania were destroyed with inefficient wood industry and expanse of agricultural land in the 1990s. Today, forests cover about one third of Albania’s land area and, due to an agreement with Italy and the World Bank, there is a large amount of reforestation underway.

Fishing

Albania’s proximity to the Ionian Sea and the Adriatic Sea give the underdeveloped fishing industry great potential. World Bank and European Community economists report that Albania's fishing industry has good potential to generate export earnings because prices in the nearby Greek and Italian markets are many times higher than those in the Albanian market. The fish available off the coasts of Albania are carp, trout, sea bream, mussels, and crustaceans.

References

 This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the Library of Congress Country Studies.

• Country studies
• CIA World Factbook
• Encyclopædia Britannica

Further reading

• Miluka, Juna; Gero Carletto, Benjamin Davis, and Alberto Zezza. “The Vanishing Farms? The Impact of International Migration on Albanian Family Farming”, Journal of Development Studies 46, no.1 (2010): 1140 - 1161
• Muller, Daniel and Thomas Sikor. "Effects of Post-Socialist Reforms on Land Cover and Land Use in South-Eastern Albania." Applied Geography 26, no. 3-4 (2006):175-191.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Category:Agriculture in Albania

• Albanian Agribusiness Council
• Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Customer Protection of Albania

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