Agriculture Ministry suggests diversifying types of subsidies

The Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry proposes subsidizing a number of works aimed at improving the situation in agriculture. Among them is the planting of apple trees and the cutting of old orchards. “Large sums of money are needed for cutting an old orchard. The land is not cultivated, the harvest is small, but the people cannot cut the trees as they need a lot of money. We want to help them so that they plant new orchards instead of the old ones,” Minister of Agriculture and Food Industry Vasile Bumakov stated for Info-Prim Neo. He said that the wishes of all the organizations of agricultural producers were taken into account. Full subsidies will be offered for the support measures only to unassociated farmers. The planting of apple trees will be subsidized starting with a density of 880 trees per hectare. Small irrigation will be subsidized in order to encourage the use of water from lakes, rivulets and other natural sources. The purchase of small-capacity equipment will be subsidized in order to stimulate investments in the development of post-harvest and processing infrastructure so that rural farmers are able to buy such equipment and the economic efficiency in rural areas is increased, said the minister. The regulations concerning the subsidization of agricultural producers will be submitted to the Government this week. They will start to be applied after they are approved.