By KYIV. Jan 5 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The European Union in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) will provide rural households, smallholder farmers and small-scale agricultural enterprises in Lviv, Zakarpattia, Ivano-Frankivsk and part of Chernivtsi regions with financing in the amount of $15.5 million.
According to a statement on the FAO website, grants in the range of $1,000 to $25,000 will be provided to eligible agricultural producers and agricultural enterprises in the following value chains: berries, vegetables and aquaculture in Lviv region, Hutsul sheep and cow bryndza cheese, honey and wine in Zakarpattia, Ivano-Frankivsk and a part of Chernivtsi regions.
"The EU funds for this FAO project aim to re-establish or reinforce pre-war level functionality of agricultural value chains. This is needed to meet the food requirements of local and displaced populations in the west and address food insecurity elsewhere in the country in the immediate and short term, and will be critical to averting a food crisis into 2023," Christian Ben Hell, the Sector Manager for Agriculture at the EU Delegation to Ukraine, said.
The investment support program will be launched through Ukraine’s State Agrarian Registry (SAR) starting from March 2023.
The funds will be disbursed in Ukrainian hryvnia at the prevailing exchange rate and beneficiaries will be required to make a matching contribution to finance the proposed investment. Specific eligibility and selection criteria, as well as procedural and administrative requirements to submit an application will be published through a publicity campaign expected to be launched shortly.
The FAO emphasized that large numbers of Ukrainian household and family farms, individual producers, small companies, traders and processors are experiencing difficulties in accessing inputs, finance and investment to support continuity and expansion of operations. The major difficulties expected in the next few months in terms of both crop and livestock production activities are low benefits from the sale of products, constrained access to fertilizers or pesticides, and fuel or electricity to power equipment.
"In addition, the project aims to assist the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences in preserving a unique national collection of plant genetic resources, which is of global significance in terms of the volume and diversity of genetic material. The project will secure and safeguard the collections of the Ukrainian plant genetic resources by moving them to a safe storage location and will improve the collections database with modern IT support," it said.
