COOPERATION BETWEEN NON-GOVERMENTAL AND PRIVATE SECTOR HELPS MOLDOVAN FARMERS GET TO FOREIGN MARKETS

Published: Feb 27, 2018 Reading time: 4 minutes
COOPERATION BETWEEN NON-GOVERMENTAL AND PRIVATE SECTOR HELPS MOLDOVAN FARMERS GET TO FOREIGN MARKETS
© Foto: Natalia Rotaru

“Sustainability is definitely a great plus in the collaboration between NGO and private sectors”, says Veronika Semelková.

Furceni village from Orhei district offers a beautiful countryside view, but it’s not only the beauty of the place that makes this village well known. Here we organise open-air activities, called field day. For Moldovan farmers, field days mean opportunities for learning and experience sharing. The farmers visit demo plots periodically, one of them being situated in Furceni village, and talk to national experts. This helps them understand what are the new techniques used in organic agriculture and to observe how efficient they are in practice.

The idea of setting up demo plots and holding field days appeared as a result of the cooperation between People in Need and PROBIO, a private company from the Czech Republic. Usually, NGOs and private sector have few things in common and rarely develop partnerships, but our experience shows that such a cooperation can be efficient and can have various benefits.

PROBIO, established by two engineers Martin Hutař and Karel Matěj in 1992, is the first Czech producer of organic food products, now being an important supplier of a wide range of quality organic products in the country. In order to ensure the development of his business, Martin Hutař looked for partners interested in or working in organic agriculture. In 2014, after several visits to the Republic of Moldova and discussions with local farmers, he saw the opportunity of growing crops here, in Eastern Europe, instead of importing them from Turkey or China.

The cooperation between People in Need and PROBIO came naturally. For a private company that comes to a new country it is important to understand right from the beginning what is the potential of the sector where it will work, and to connect with local farmers as well. At that time, People in Need knew the context from the Republic of Moldova and had already contacts among farmers willing to create organic farming. All this information and knowledge meant useful resources, which People in Need shared with PROBIO.

As partners, we all are aiming at developing the organic sector, each from its own perspective – nongovernmental and private. This means that business meets the social and environmental values. How? Veronika Semelková, Project Manager for Moldova at PROBIO, explains:

‘Our interest is to have reliable suppliers that grow quality crops. And to be able to do that, we need to transfer know-how to Moldova, to the farmers. It is beneficial because we are educating farmers, and in the end this strengthens the whole sector’.

The organic farmers, People in Need team and PROBIO strive to achieve one thing – sustainability. The training programmes and activities like field days, organised with the support of People in Need, offer to farmers a theoretical and practical basis to grow organic products, while the collaboration with PROBIO ensures clear opportunities for exporting the products. The year 2018 is important for all of us, because the first organic harvest will be exported later on – cereals, oil crops and legumes. For the six farmers with whom we worked intensively over the last two years this means sales market, reward for the effort, time and money invested, but also the confidence to keep going on.

Beyond the results expected this year, all the projects regarding the development of organic agriculture in the Republic of Moldova – those implemented by People in Need, PROBIO, ÚKZÚZ or others – will have one logical framework. For the main donors supporting organic agriculture – Czech Development Agency and USAID Moldova – this means more coordination in actions, more responsibility and efficiency, and a greater impact. And who knows, maybe our experience as nongovernmental organisation working together with a private company will inspire other NGOs and private companies to build partnerships in other sectors as well.

Autor: Natalia Rotaru, Communication Officer

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