For more than 30 years, the LEADER methodology has been a guiding light for local/rural development. This approach actively involves people in the community, giving them the power to plan their development strategies, make decisions, and allocate resources to improve their rural areas. LEADER's success is particularly based in community-led agri-food projects, where farmers, food processors, eateries, and retailers all cooperate with each other. These projects go beyond just creating and preserving jobs in rural areas. They also lead to new products and services, encouraging innovation that helps local businesses and families in rural Europe adapt to changing conditions, such as global climate change, urbanisation, and other negative shifts in the rural environment.
In Armenia, women’s participation in decision-making at the community level, especially in rural communities, is fairly low. According to the Country Gender Assessment of Armenia conducted in 2017, the principal reasons for their limited involvement in community leadership include gendered social norms, men’s lack of acceptance of women’s leadership, women’s fear of expressing themselves and a lack of self-confidence. Only a very small number of urban and rural municipalities are headed by women in Armenia. Our story is about one of these women – Administrative Head of Debet village of Lori region, Anush Sargsyan.
When Edik Harutyunyan began farming 20 years ago, he had little more than a small plot of land and a big goal. He wanted to prove to people in his rural community in Armenia that it is possible to earn enough money from farming to make a living – an anomaly in a country where thousands each year go abroad in search of seasonal work.
Over the past twenty years Armenia’s forest cover – which based on census data of 1993 has been 334,100 ha, 11.2 percent of the total land area, based on the recent data by GIZ currently is 332,333 ha.
Fruit production has previously been the most profitable element of the cropping pattern in Armenia. The range in altitude of the country and variety of soil-climatic conditions have created conditions for the production of apricot, peach, plum, cherry, apple, pear, quince, walnut, peanut, fig and pomegranate. Of the total orchard areas of 34,780 ha, apricot and peach makes 78-80%.
Over the past decades, the idea of harnessing the skyrocketing potential of information and communication technologies (ICT) to fuel the most development-oriented areas of human activities, such as research and education, has become increasingly dominant throughout the world.
A small herd of cows blocked the picturesque mountain road as our vehicle approached the beautiful town of Goris in the south of Armenia. Cows appeared to be healthy and robust yet something was different about them.
The Project is one of the areas of cooperation between the Armenian and Greek governments in agricultural development and is implemented by FAO. The project goal is to provide safe meat and meat products in Armenia. The focus of the project is small and medium enterprises with the skills and equipment needed to produce, store and market this meat and meat products.
When international wheat prices started to rise in 2007, this bread-loving nation knew it was in trouble.