Summary of the project
The project stems from the request of young families returning from the hamlet of Osmace, a Muslim village located in the mountains around Srebrenica (Bosnia and Herzegovina), to find the source of livelihood of their family income in agriculture.
With this objective, the returning young people have resumed the cultivation of the land, cultivating, in the last two years, about 13 hectares of buckwheat land.The war that shook the country from 1992 to the end of 1995 still causes a series of obstacles in making agricultural production sufficiently profitable: the transfer of skills between generations has failed, large cultivated areas have been abandoned, the equipment available is scarce and obsolete, the producers have little technical training and are relatively isolated from the flows of the valley floor.
The Osmace families then turned to some Italian associations that had been present in the area for many years, during which they carried out activities to support rural development projects and solidarity initiatives with the population.
In particular, ASF has made itself available to support the restart of production activities, coordinating a project group composed of the NGO ACS, Italian farmers and technicians and other associations already present in Bosnia.
Period: 15 months, from March 2013 to June 2014
Specific Objectives
To contribute to achieving the general objective, the good practices developed with the project focus on the creation of a microeconomic system based on the optimal management of small farms such as to allow the improvement of the family income of the families involved.
Intervention
The highlighted needs therefore concern the following aspects:
- Agronomic technical training
- Improvement of cultivation techniques and inclusion of other crops (autumn-winter cereals) in the agrarian rotation in order to increase productivity and crop diversification; inclusion in the rotation of the green manure technique to intervene on soil fertility
- Improvement of the equipment of machines and equipment
- Increase in the availability of economic resources for the purchase of seeds and diesel necessary to start production
- Improving the position of the product in the market, also differentiating the type of products offered
Considering the needs detected, it was therefore considered important to set up the project first on training and then on the supply of material resources (seeds, equipment, agricultural inputs) that, while maintaining the typical characteristics of Osmace's agriculture, can allow young local producers to make the most of their territory, creating concrete opportunities for economic development.
Project partners
Leader: Agronomists and Foresters Without Borders (ASF) ONLUS of Padua
Other partners:
- Cooperation and Solidarity Association (ACS), Padua
- El Tamiso Agricultural Cooperative, Padua
- Peace Center of the City of Venice
- Buongiorno Bosnia Group — Dobardan Venecija di Venezia
- Adopt Srebrenica Group