The Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry drafted a national strategy for promoting the national products in schools and kindergartens, Minister Viorel Gherciu Gherciu announced in a news conference. According to the official, by this program they will promote the products in the short food chain. It also covers the procurement procedures for providing the schools and kindergartens with food products. The document will be submitted to the Government for approval and then to Parliament for consideration, IPN reports.
Viorel Gherciu said that 2021 wasn’t at all easy, but large harvests for most of the crops could be secured. For the first time, there were harvested over 1.5 million tonnes of wheat, more than 800,000 tonnes of sunflower and the corn crop is also expected to be large, of over 2.5 million tonnes. There were gathered over 600,000 tonnes of apples and more than 315,000 tonnes of grapes.
This year the farmers invested over 5 billion lei in agriculture and the Government provided over 1.5 million lei in subsidies. The Agency for Intervention and Payments in Agriculture received over 8,500 applications for subsidies. Following legislative changes, subsidies as from 2022 will also be provided to research institutions and water users associations.
The project “Moldova’s Orchard” was extended until May 2023, with about €60 million being made available for modernizing the horticultural sector. Subsidies were also offered for the development of the animal-breeding sector. The number of farm animals the past three years decreased by 25%, while milk production declined by 14%. The milk supplies currently satisfy 71% of Moldova’s needs. The supply of poultry satisfies 68% of the demand, while of butter and cheese – 58%.
As regards winemaking and winegrowing, the minister said there were harvested 315,000 tonnes of grapes, 65,000 tonnes of which were table grapes. Over 30,000 tonnes of grapes of this year’s harvest were exported by November 15. Moldovan table grapes were exported primarily to Russia and even to Canada. Wine exports in the first eight months of this year came to UIS$90 million, with wine deliveries being the largest to the EU and the CIS. Romania, the Czech Republic, Poland, Russia and Chile are the main importers of Moldovan wine.
