Agriculture and Rural Development Expertise
Agricultural Policy and Rural Development form our oldest fields of activity and we can thus look back on an extensive track record of projects implemented in these sectors. Our technical assistance and capacity building programmes cover a wide range of topics from basic questions of EU integration to highly specialized issues:
- Programming Cycle - Training & Technical assistance in each step in the programming cycle with regard to agriculture and rural development for Implementing Agencies tasked with the responsibility of elaboration of programmes, identification of projects, undertaking feasibility and other quality control checks on the programme, defining the financing of the programmes, implementation, monitoring (including databases, reporting, on-the-spot inspections), and evaluation experience.
- CAP Common Agricultural Policy - Consultation and training on EU agricultural policy, development of concepts for CEECs to meet the demands of CAP, elaboration of feasibility studies on the economic impacts of accession to the EU and approximation of laws, advice and training on Common Market Organisations (including pricing policy, tendering procedures, reporting requirements, legal and trade policy requirements).
- Capacity building and institution strengthening - Training & Technical Assistance in the fields of agricultural sector analyses, statistics and market economics CAP and project management methods to public institutions/employees, as well as direct training of farmers, field workers for e.g. income diversification.
- Rural Development - Training & Technical Assistance in rural development policy and programmes. Economic analyses of impact of rural development programme (e.g. IPARD), information systems to enhance rural policy analysis capability, etc.
Our focus in these areas has been on Central and Eastern-European Countries (CEECs) and we have been active with regard to agriculture and rural development projects in Slovakia, Poland, Latvia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Croatia. More recently we have as well become active in Turkey, being responsible for the large agricultural component of a regional development project. Over the longer term, we aim to provide our services more broadly, covering african, carribbean and pacific (ACP) countries as well.
