Tetra Tech Party Chief Mark Wood and our Food and Agriculture Security team wrote this article about working with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to protect Kosovo's agricultural sector.

This blog was originally published on AgriLinks.

The agricultural sectors in Kosovo and Europe are experiencing the effects of climate change, reflected in increasing variability and unpredictability of the weather. Climate change does not only affect crop production; It affects the entire market system, affecting the livelihoods of Kosovar producers and their competitiveness in the markets they have established since the country gained independence.

During the summer, extreme weather events have increased with more flooding and dry spells during critical growing periods. In the winter, snowfall variability affects groundwater accumulation and freezing conditions, which affects fruit set, pest and disease prevalence, and sufficient water supply. Finally, inconsistent spring temperatures are changing Kosovo's harvest period.

Historically, Kosovo has enjoyed first-to-market advantage and correspondingly high sales prices, particularly for blueberries and asparagus, due to their early harvest period. Changes in the timing of the harvest reduce Kosovo's competitive advantage in highly integrated and highly competitive markets.

Besnik Lila, a young Kosovar who established the largest blueberry orchard in Kosovo, has witnessed these changes firsthand. During the 2018 blueberry harvest, warm spring temperatures in northern Europe shifted the harvest season two weeks earlier in large production areas such as the Netherlands, causing harvests to coincide with those in Kosovo and southern Europe. Europe, causing market prices to plummet, reducing the profitability of the crop. the entire value chain and threatens Besnik's operations and livelihoods.

Kosovo's farmers must adapt to a changing climate and growing environments to protect their livelihoods and keep farming a viable business. USAID's Agricultural and Rural Opportunities Activity (AGRO), implemented by Tetra Tech, designed innovative technologies and activities, including modern irrigation and fertigation systems, state-of-the-art anti-hail systems, and new plant varieties. We partner with the private sector to test and scale up these technologies and provide urgent advice to improve farmers' adaptive capacity. These activities helped farmers stay competitive and build the capacity they need to be resilient and thrive in a changing climate and dynamic marketplace.

Improve water efficiency, accessibility and plant health

Traditionally, Kosovo farmers have irrigated with flood systems, which can cause water losses of up to 50 percent through soil seepage. The same field can be over-irrigated in some locations and under-irrigated in others, stressing crops, increasing susceptibility to pests and diseases, and reducing yields.

To address these challenges, AGRO helps farmers develop modern and efficient irrigation systems, including drip systems that maximize efficiency through water supply and fertigation. These systems reduce waste, overapplication, and runoff. Accurate and timely water metering, combined with careful monitoring of crop nutrition, ensures that crop growth is optimized and increases the ability of plants to resist pest and disease pressures. For example, AGRO worked with farmers and collection centers in the sour cherry and other fruit crop value chain to strengthen plant health through the adoption of drip irrigation and fertigation systems, reducing the susceptibility of crops to an increasingly prevalent wood borer pest.

Drip irrigation requires relatively low pressure, which improves the energy efficiency of pumping and reduces withdrawal rates from both aquifers and surface water storage systems, a critical problem in western Kosovo. In raspberry-growing areas, drip irrigation systems have transformed primocaña varieties, which bear fruit throughout the summer and are more vulnerable if only grown on dry land. Modern irrigation has increased yields by more than 30 percent above regional averages. The remarkable results observed in AGRO-supported fields prompted commercial farmers to convert to drip systems in their orchards on several thousand hectares.

Trimor Hyseni, a young Kosovar from the municipality of Ferizaj, established four hectares of primocane raspberries and adopted drip irrigation and fertigation systems. Trimor's raspberry yields were double the regional average at 13 metric tons per hectare. Ismet Osmani, a minority Bosnian farmer from the Zhupa Valley in southern Kosovo, also applied a precision irrigation system. Ismet's floricane, short-season, early-season raspberry variety yielded 22 metric tons per hectare, again almost twice the regional average for this variety.

Vegetable growers are also switching from traditional flood irrigation practices to drip irrigation and fertigation systems. As a result of AGRO-supported field demonstrations, training and promotion, pepper growers in the municipality of Podujevo have fully embraced drip irrigation. In the Dukagjini Valley, farmers are adapting traditional production systems to meet growing export demand with strict supply requirements for consistency and quality. Aggregators incorporate technical services in their support to farmers, including training in good agricultural practices, harvest management, and post-harvest handling to ensure consistent quality.

AGRO's climate-smart agriculture approach promotes modern irrigation techniques and technical services for stronger and more resilient crops. This approach ensures that farmers and agribusinesses in 400 hectares of greenhouses and 1000 hectares of open field production of gherkins, peppers and tomatoes are better able to manage climate risks and climate change. As a result, these farmers can reliably meet domestic and international market demands, secure their income, and secure their livelihoods.

Innovating to cope with extreme weather events

Kosovo is experiencing less predictable temperature ranges with unusually high temperatures during the day and low temperatures at night. AGRO has developed partnerships to improve planting materials, develop innovative frost protection systems, protect crops from hail and increase the resistance of greenhouses to climate change.

AGRO works in partnership with the private sector to select and test new plant varieties for performance at multiple sites to determine suitability in a changing climate. The introduction of new climate-adapted plant varieties, following commercial screening trials, is an effective way of mitigating the effects of extreme temperature variation. The new planting materials diversify the production landscape, reducing farmers' risk from extreme weather conditions, while increasing their responsiveness to market requirements from European and other buyers.

Once the materials are planted, erratic and unseasonable temperatures can still pose a serious threat to growers of pome fruits (for example, apples and pears). Unusually high spring temperatures caused early flowering for two consecutive years for the company EBE, which grows high-quality apples in Mališevo. In 2017, the season's crop was lost in a single night when embryonic fruits were destroyed by an unusually late frost in May. To avoid similar results, AGRO collaborated with the pome fruit sector to develop an anti-frost system suitable for pome fruit orchards. Through AGRO's Innovation and Incentive Fund, AGRO awarded a grant for an eight-hectare demonstration plot to test whether the anti-frost system protects the crop if the temperature drops below freezing during the critical flowering phase. spring.

Heavy, damaging hail is also becoming a common occurrence in Kosovo, causing up to €20,000 (USD $23,635) of damage per hectare to high-value crops such as blueberries. In response, AGRO supported the installation of anti-hail nets by apple growers, which offers additional benefits by reducing water loss from the field, regulating light intensity and providing protection against frost, which forms on the network instead of on the plants.

Kosovo's expanding greenhouse sector is also affected by increasingly unpredictable temperature fluctuations, especially due to very low temperatures at the beginning of the season and unusually high temperatures at the end of the season. In response, AGRO worked with farmers to adapt “heating systems,” using double-insulated thermal “fleece” layers and improving ventilation management protocols to counteract temperature variability and extend production during shoulder seasons. . Farmers have invested heavily in these systems to improve product quality and consistency, resulting in greater reliability for demanding export markets. In the municipality of Mamuša, AGRO provided technical assistance to farmers to increase the resilience of greenhouses to climate change on more than 300 hectares. This investment attracted the attention and trust of Austrian pickle importers,

Develop early warning and remote monitoring systems

Farmers need accurate forecast information on weather events, pests and diseases to properly plan for short-term risk management and long-term adaptation actions. AGRO collaborated with Kosovo's IPKO Telecommunications to install a network of 19 weather monitoring stations in six production zones across the country, employing two young graduates to manage the system. These stations feed into a central location, where IPKO employees analyze the data and formulate specific agronomic advice on the potential for pest and disease outbreaks in 24 crops serving more than 1000 farmers and input suppliers. IPKO disseminates the information to registered farmers and input suppliers via text messages.

Improving competitiveness and accelerating adaptation in the Kosovo agricultural sector

AGRO supports Kosovo farmers to quickly adapt to changing climate and growing environments through innovative technologies, new plant varieties, private sector involvement and timely technical assistance to farmers. AGRO has improved the resilience of farmers and service providers in response to changing climate conditions, while meeting the high quality standards of demanding European markets.