Apiculture during the past few years has witnessed upward trends, but experts consider the sector can reach a professional level only if the producers create cooperatives so as to ensure the production of homogenous, high-quality honey in competitive quantities for export, IPN reports, quoting Agrobiznes. Owing to the unfavorable weather conditions, last year honey exports from Moldova decreased by 18%. The formation of groups of producers would facilitate access to financing and, consequently, to the necessary modern technologies and equipment.
According to the National Food Safety Agency, more than 7,000 apiaries with 236,000 bee families have been officially registered in Moldova. Secretary of state at the Ministry of Agriculture, Regional Development and Environment Veaceslav Cernat said 90% of the honey made in Moldova is exported. Apiculture in Moldova has strong points and growth potential, but beekeeping as a business is in a crisis as the beekeepers produce small quantities of honey that do not satisfy the export demand. In Moldova, there are no groups of honey producers, four-five producers that could export at least 20 tonnes of honey. At the same time, the state provides subsidies primarily to groups of beekeepers.
The executive director of the Union of Entrepreneurial Cooperatives Stelian Andronache, consultant of the Moldova Agricultural Competitiveness Project (MAC-P), said the existence of the groups of fruit and vegetable producers shows the association can help to significantly increase the farmers’ capacity to transom the activity into a successful business. Almost all the agricultural producers in the EU work as part of a group or cluster as they swiftly understood that they cannot cope alone.
MAC-P vice director Olga Sainciuc said the decision to extend the number of potential participants in the Agricultural Competitiveness Project that has been implemented in Moldova since 2012 was approved in 2016. The World Bank allocated US$ 10 million in additional investment for officially registered groups of producers. Three directions were chosen for assistance: horticultural sector, beekeeping sector and milk sector. A grant is of at most US$ 350,000.
Even if there were a number of initiative groups of beekeepers, no group was registered officially. The financing project was extended until the end of 2020 to help the beekeepers transform their hobby into a profitable business and to prevent them from selling their products to intermediates who gain substantially from sales.
