The Government of the Azores will continue to promote sessions to inform farmers about the various types of financial support, which were created to help those facing the difficulties that resulted from the increase in interest rates and from the reduced availability of loans.
Members from several services of the Regional Secretariat for Agriculture and Forestry explained to dozens of farmers from the municipality of Nordeste the procedures to be used by agriculture businesspeople who wish to apply to the available credit-lines. This session took place on Monday night.
During this session, the good practices in ensilage production were addressed in order to improve the quality of Regional milk.
Noé Rodrigues presided over the opening session and spoke about the necessity of increasing the competitiveness of Azorean dairy farms, assuring that the Government of the Azores will continue to reinforce the investments in the construction of agriculture, rural and forest roads, in the water and energy supplies to farms in addition to the reparcelling initiatives.
The credit-lines implemented by the Government, through the Regional Agricultural Support System (SAFIAGRI), which integrates financial compensation line addressed to all farmers who have bank charges due to loans which were contracted to invest in farms, are still available for all Azorean farmers.
Furthermore, another credit-line aims to supply the working capital, subsidising financial credit and reinforcing the development and improvement of the organisational and functional conditions regarding the sector activities for all farms in the Azores.
There is also a third type of support which includes a complementary program of PRORURAL, aimed to support investment projects in farms, which should be properly approved, validated and contracted, thus making possible to anticipate the financial support from the European Union.
These credit-lines may benefit all Azorean farmers, compensating them from the rise of interest rates which occurred between January 1, 2006 and October 31, 2008 and which consequently caused an increase regarding production structure costs and agricultural activity profitability.
During the visit to the municipality of Nordeste, Noé Rodrigues visited the works on various agriculture and forest roads in the “Toco da Ginja,” “Russo/Banda do Moinho/Pico e Canelão,” “Santo António” and “Travessa do Lenho” areas, whose public investment reaches 1.4 million Euros.