At the final conference of the successfully implemented EU project “Establishment of the Farm Accountancy Data Network – FADN” held on 1 October in Belgrade’s Metropol Palace hotel, Danilo Golubovic, State Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture and Environmental Protection and Michael Bullen, Sector Manager for Agriculture and Rural Development at the EU Delegation to Serbia stressed the importance of this project and presented its main results.
The project, which was funded by the EU with €3.5 million, over the last four years of implementation, helped the Ministry of Agriculture and Environmental Protection to set up the FADN system in Serbia. The established Serbian FADN organisation is now part of the EU-wide network of agriculture data collection, which is an important requirement in Serbia’s EU accession process.
The Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) collects accountancy data from farms and uses these for statistics on farm income and farm economics as well as for analysis of the financial consequences of changes in the agricultural policy. Ministry of Agriculture and Environmental Protection will use the FADN data in the EU negotiation process for assessing the economic consequences of adaption to the EU Common Agricultural Policy as well as the new market situation Serbian farmers will face after EU accession.
During the project period, the Serbian FADN organisation was established, the methodology for collection of data elaborated and more around 150 persons from the different Serbian institutions received extensive training for work within the system.
In addition a rulebook on FADN has been prepared and is now in process of adoption by the Ministry of Agriculture and Environmental Protection and internet-based software for data collection and processing have been established.
100 data collectors from all parts of Serbia collected accountancy data from close to 1000 farms for the accounting year 2014.
Each participating farmer received feed-back forms with financial information and analysis of their farm, which assists their farm management.
The data have also been used for some initial statistics on the farm economy for the agricultural sector as well as different types and sizes of farms. Ministry of Agriculture and Environmental Protection is now in the process of analysing these data.
The Serbian FADN organisation is formed by the following institutions: Serbian Ministry of Agriculture and Environmental Protection, Provincial Secretariat of Agriculture, Water Economy and Forestry of AP Vojvodina, Institute for Science Application in Agriculture, Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, Agricultural Faculties and the Agricultural Extension Service.
With the help of the project, a good basis for analysing the future development of the agricultural sector and improving the competitiveness of Serbian farmers is established.
