The Ministry of Agriculture, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations have started the realization of the project of drafting the National Irrigation Strategy and the five-year Action Plan and Investment Plan, Danas reports.
“In the next two years, we will identify concrete investment priorities, which will increase agricultural productivity, sustainable production with environmental protection and resilience to climate change through improved existing and developing a new irrigation network,” said Natasa Milic, director of the Republic Water Directorate.
The main goal of the project is to improve agricultural production by increasing irrigation capacity, because Serbia is one of the leading agricultural producers and exporters of cereals and oilseeds in the region.
“With this project, we want to enable the involvement and participation of all relevant institutions, government agencies, scientific institutes, the private sector, farmers and one of the biggest challenges in Serbian agriculture,” said Miljan Zdrale, EBRD’s regional director for agribusiness for Central and Southeast Europe.
On the other hand, climate change and increasingly frequent droughts are having an extremely negative impact on yields and incomes.
Higher irrigation will enable the cultivation of crops of higher value, but also increase the yield of those that are already grown.
Resistance to climate change should certainly increase, because less than two percent of arable land in Serbia is currently irrigated, Nova Ekonomija reports.
