Young farmers are the focus of support policies of the Common Agricultural Policy, they will continue to be the focus in the next programming period. This was announced by the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Forestry Desislava Taneva at the opening of the second National Forum of Young Farmers at the Agricultural University - Plovdiv, organised by the MEP from the European People's Party Vladimir Urutchev. She specified that the contracting of approved projects under sub-measure 6.1 “Young Farmer” under the Rural Development Program (RDP) 2014-2020 is expected to be finalised in a very short term. In the current programming period, its budget will be completely utilised for supporting more than 2,500 farmers, Minister Taneva said.
She announced that the last call under sub-measure 6.3 “Starting aid for small farm development” for the RDP 2014-2020 will be launched in mid-June. According to statistics, nearly half of the beneficiaries are also young farmers.I am glad that young people are increasingly finding farming attractive. This is one of the perspectives in our country, and I hope that with their help Bulgarian agriculture will quickly become more competitive, Desislava Taneva pointed out. She specified that under sub-measure 4.1 “Investments in agricultural holdings” the budget of which has also been exhausted for the current programming period, just over 25% of all beneficiaries are young farmers. Minister Taneva said that 60% of the young farmers receiving support under sub-measure are male, and the remaining 40% - female.
During the forum, seven approved projects were presented at the National Young Farmer Competition - 2019. The winner will be elected at the end of the forum. He/she will compete for the European Young Farmer Award in Brussels.
The event was also attended by Prof. Hristina Yancheva, Rector of the Agricultural University of Plovdiv, and Jannes Maes, President of the European Council of Young Farmers (CEJA).