A flower prized by the skin care industry is also key to long-lasting financial stability for a multiethnic group of women who recently started growing it in Kosovo.
Access to finance is a constant challenge for Kosovo’s small farming businesses, with profits from a low sales year often drying up before they can be put to use in growing the following year’s bumper crop. To address this, USAID recently partnered with TEB Bank to unveil the Agricard—a credit card specifically designed to increase cash flow for farmers before the spring growing season.
Aug. 2014—The villages tucked into the hills outside the town of Malishevë/o in central Kosovo are like many in the landlocked country—difficult to access by road—but many who live there prefer the quiet agrarian life to the faster pace of the country’s bigger cities.
For the people of Kosovo, family is the foundation of a vibrant culture that values bringing people together regularly to celebrate the big events, like holidays and weddings, as well as the commonplace, like traditional family lunch on a Sunday afternoon. In many of the country’s remote villages, community is a vital extension of the family unit—with families regularly working together in farm cooperatives and town councils.
June 2014—A new opportunity for Kosovo’s farmers has sent up its first tender green shoots, only to see them quickly harvested, cooled, packaged and sold to an enthusiastic public.
Kosovo produced its first asparagus crop in 2014, marking the culmination of a three-year effort by USAID to introduce cultivation of the spring delicacy.
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