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The Albanian agriculture sector is deeply affected by climate change. To cope with climate change, it is necessary to understand its consequences. The views of agriculture extension service experts are crucial in improving farmers’ understanding and resilience, especially when farming practices are poorly adapted to the changing climate. This paper analyses the risks from climate change and the adaptive capacity of farmers based on an expert evaluation survey. The respondents identified prolongation of drought durations, rising temperatures, above-average occurrences of floods, pre-seasonal rainfall and frost as primary risks during recent years. Extension experts view a high (negative) impact from climate change through processes such as increased plant diseases occurrence, increased exposure to rodents, harmful insects and pests for plants and livestock, as well as forest and pasture degradation. The paper also provides experts’ opinions on the policy implications, such as considerations about adaptation strategies towards climate change.

Farm to school (F2S) programmes ensure school pupils receive an appropriate diet, fight malnutrition, and motivate children to attend school. The participation of local smallholders in F2S schemes contributes to these objectives, but also provides a market opportunity for local small farms. This is particularly important in the case of developing or emerging economies that are characterised by malnutrition among children and where smallholdings often struggle with limited market access, as is the case with Albania. The aim of this paper is to explore the main factors affecting farmers' willingness to participate in a F2S scheme using data from a structured farm survey. Regression analysis results show that economically based motivation (farm-related factors such as size and post-harvest losses) intertwined with social capital factors and attitudinal indicators (experience and attitudes towards cooperation, reliance on local governmental support, information, and product safety perception level) affect farmers' willingness to participate in F2S schemes. For farmers to participate viably in such schemes, it is necessary to provide knowledge, awareness, and support for ensuring compliance with food safety and quality standards and for improving cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A survey was carried out during the lockdown period (April-May 2020), to assess agricultural advisors' preferences on extension service activities. A questionnaire was mailed to the 66 advisors of the Regional Agencies of Extension Service of Tirana and Korça and the descriptive statistic method was used to analyse the data collected. Before disseminating the innovations, the advisors need more trainings on extension methods & activities, and agricultural practices. "Trainings combined with field visits for the practical side" is their first choice to get new knowledge on topics related to their work, while as a second choice they have preferred "open field days". Extensionists perception is that that "Demonstrations" and "Trainings combined with on-farm visits" are the two main activities that the extensionists think of as the most suitable activities for the farmers and for the realization of their plan of extension activities. As less important activities extensionists listed: "In-country trainings", "Brochure/Leaflet", "Study tours" and "Open field days". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Greenhouse vegetables have been one of the fastest growing and best performing Albanian agrifood subsectors. This paper analyses the current state of coordination and recent developments in the greenhouse vegetable value chain, based on a structured farm survey. The results show that vertical cooperation is not sustainable and most greenhouse vegetable farmers do not use written contracts. Furthermore, most farmers do not carry out soil or water analysis. Albanian farmers do not trust the quality of inputs while claiming that (input) prices are unfair and unreasonable. This is, to a large extent, a result of "spot market" coordination, which cannot guarantee traceability and standards compliance; therefore Contract Farming is the adequate tool to address these gaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is an exploratory survey, aiming at assessing agricultural advisors training needs and their priorities. Data were collected through a questionnaire mailed to the 66 advisors and the method of data analysis used was the descriptive statistics. All advisors reported they needed more trainings on extension methods & activities, and agricultural practices before they could disseminate the innovations. 67-86% of the advisors stated as important and very important the trainings on extension methods and activities, while 84-90% of them ranked the agricultural practices as important and very important. Less experienced advisors are more interested in the agricultural practices compare with more experienced ones. The majority of respondents (59.1%) indicated that they prefer to receive in- service training during spring. Most of the advisors (63.6%) indicated that the main reason for training is to get acquainted with new technologies to disseminate them to the farmers. The advisors would prefer to receive in-service training on new technologies from the Agricultural Technology transfer Centres (63.6%) and from Agricultural University on plant protection (42.9%). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]