Farmers should be given the opportunity to understand the role of co-operatives!
“I expect this debate on agricultural cooperatives organized by the European Movement in the framework of the National Convention that involves numerous experts from our country and the region, to give fruitful results, but above all to help raise public awareness of farmers on the benefits of their association , especially in strengthening the existing cooperatives and forming new ones, “said Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Economy of the Republic of Macedonia, Ljupco Nikolovski at today’s Third Session of Working Group 1 – Agriculture in and Rural Development (Chapter 11) of the National Convention for the European Union in Macedonia (NKEU-MK), which was held at the Club of Deputies.
According to Nikolovski, the Ministry is making efforts to consolidate and consolidate agricultural cooperatives, something that has been neglected for decades. The project for support and development of agricultural cooperatives works, which will last until February 2021 is another example of their willingness to address the issue. From the last year until now, 20 applications from agricultural cooperatives have been submitted, and 32 have shown interest in establishing new cooperatives. The Minister pointed out that the debate is a good opportunity for farmers to get involved with their suggestions, ideas, suggestions and criticism in order to get better solutions, just like the previous two expert sessions related to the IPARD Program and the lending, have made a significant contribution to increasing the interest.
As for the legislation, Professor Jovan Azhderski from the Faculty of Agriculture and Food of the University of Skopje said, it exists, but it is necessary to establish cooperative principles, such as democratic control, economic participation, autonomy, training and educating younger staff. “Farmers should be given an opportunity to understand the role of co-operatives,” said Professor Azhderski, referring to the historical aspects of the co-operatives in the Republic of Macedonia, which during their independence were about 1,000 in number but without real functionality.
The debate was attended by the director of the Croatian Center for Co-operative Entrepreneurship, Tomislav Klaric, who said that “Co-operatives are business, demography and the future”. And he confirmed that we had negative experiences of co-operatives in the region under communism, but that now the healthy foundations of the co-operative society should be laid, as a telegram of the future and the prosperity of the economy. As confirmation of this, he pointed out the fact that in the world there are billion members in cooperatives, that is, every seventh person on the planet is a member of the cooperative, and only in the EU every fifth inhabitant is a member of the co-operative.