The Agency published on its official website the names of farmers nationwide who qualified for financial support aimed at boosting the MAP sector, a traditionally export-oriented industry with strong market potential and increasing labor demand.

This year, the scheme offers farmers 30,000 lek per hectare for areas ranging from 1 to 10 hectares. For areas exceeding 10 hectares, farmers will receive 50% of the standard subsidy rate per additional hectare.

Farmer groups – minimum seven members – qualify for full subsidies with no financial ceiling.

Albania ranks among the world’s top 25 exporters of medicinal and aromatic plants, which account for nearly 20% of the country’s total agricultural exports. Key export products include sage, oregano, thyme, and lavender.

The country has also seen a modest but growing increase in essential oil exports and domestic processing capacity.

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Prime Minister Edi Rama on Sunday shared images from the lavender fields of Kushovë, a village in the Gramsh region, which has become a hub for the large-scale cultivation of this fragrant and medicinal plant.

Lavender, along with sage, thyme, oregano and other aromatic and medicinal herbs, forms a significant part of Albania’s agricultural exports. The sector generates increasing income for local farmers and contributes to job creation in the country’s remote areas.

“Fields like these have turned into both an economic resource and a tourist attraction,” Rama wrote on social media, highlighting the dual value of lavender in boosting both production and visitor numbers.

Albania is home to over 7,000 plant species – around 32% of Europe’s entire flora – of which more than 400 have been identified as medicinal or aromatic. Over 200 of these are collected and traded, often as wild-grown crops.

There is also a growing interest in essential oil production, supported by increased domestic processing capacity and a modest but rising volume of exports.

According to surveys, in certain rural areas of Albania, nearly all households derive a substantial portion of their income from the collection and trade of medicinal and aromatic plants.

Its rich biodiversity continues to position Albania as a promising player in the global sector of medicinal and aromatic plants.

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The Agricultural and Rural Development Agency (ARDA) said Tuesday that farmers involved in collection, cultivation, storage and processing of medicinal plants and aromatic herbs are entitled to receiving a fund of 30 000 lek per hectare if the cultivated area ranges from one to 10 hectares.

According to ARDA, farmers cultivating larger land areas are entitled to benefiting an additional aid equal to 50% of the funding per each hectare over the 10-heactares ceiling.

In the meantime, groups of farmers including at least seven farmers will benefit 100% of the funding.

Albania cultivates some 330 types of medicinal herbs, with 186 types being exported, placing it among the top 25 leading exporters worldwide. Medicinal plants account for around 20% of Albania’s agricultural exports.

Albania is home to more than 400 species of identified medical plants and herbs, and over 200 of them are collected, processed and mainly exported.

Albania has a prominent industry in medicinal herbs such as sage, lavender, lavender and everlasting flower, and is the world’s leading exporter of sage.

Income from growing and selling medicinal herbs is an important form of income for many families, including those in rural and mountainous areas. Shkodra is the most prevalent area for this trade, followed by Elbasan in the central region and Kukes in the mountainous north.

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Renowned professors and academics from Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, Greece, Montenegro, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovakia, Serbia, Switzerland, Italy, Croatia and Bulgaria attended the gathering to discuss challenges and ways to promote cultivation of medicinal and aromatic plants in the remote mountainous areas in particular.

“The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development will support policies aimed at improving the quality of medicinal and aromatic plants, and reducing overexploitation from the collection of wild plants (genetic erosion). Optimizing genetic resources and spreading innovative cultivation technologies for MAPs will guarantee a sustainable and high-quality supply of plant material for the medicinal plants industry in our region, as well as boost employment and household income in the rural areas,” Minister Denaj said.

Creation of the Balkan consortium will also create new employment opportunities and income in the rural areas.

Albania’s medicinal herb industry has pursued an upward trend in the last few years, becoming a source of income for thousands of families. Albania cultivates some 330 types of medicinal herbs, with 186 types being exported, placing it among the top 25 leading exporters worldwide and employing some 90,000 people.

Albania is home to a range of types of medicinal herbs, including lavender, oregano, thyme, juniper, helichrysum, malva sylvestris, laurel leaves, calendula, mountain tea, wild apple etc.

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From a former dilapidated school building and a public ground of no use for local residents, thanks to the municipal investment and thanks to the collaboration with local farmers, it was transformed into a centre featuring state-of-the-art technology for collection and processing of the medicinal plants. Lazarat and the surrounding areas are a treasure trove of the medicinal plants and herbs.

Prime Minister Edi Rama visited the new medicinal plants collection and processing centre to see firsthand this important investment.

“This is the new medicinal plants collection facility, once a ruined school building that served as such for a very short period of time, built as a regrettable public investment in 2009 and to be abandoned just a few years later. It is totally a ruined and abandoned public space without a plan and a project that turned out to be totally useless for the Lazarat residents themselves too. For over two years now, the Municipality of Gjirokaster, in collaboration with local residents and farmers in Lazarat, who are very hardworking people, agreed and contributed to the project designed to collect and process a tremendous natural wealth of Lazarat and the surrounding areas that are extremely rich in medical plants and aromatic herbs. The demand for such products is very high and this centre for medicinal plants collection and processing was built through a fund provided by the municipality and local donors. The centre was inaugurated two days ago. The farmers association has also been founded, with the majority of participating farmers being from Lazarat, as well as from other villages, who are involved in collection and processing of the medicinal plants,” the Minister of Tourism and Environment Mirela Kumbaro said.

In the meantime, a local entrepreneur, commending local government authorities for providing due funding and assistance to build this centre, said that area’s richness in a wide range and variety of medicinal plants will generate stronger local economy and employment.

“It is worth noting the fact that based on the findings of a feasibility study, the region of Gjirokaster is home to around 400 various species of medicinal plants. Albania is perhaps one of the richest countries in medicinal plants and herbs in the world and a resource-rich country. We wanted the centre to work best in economic and employment terms, but we are also seeking to include it in the itinerary of aromatic and scented journeys for the tourists to visit all the plantations due to be created in the area,” she said.

On his part, Prime Minister Edi Rama praised local government authorities and farmers for their work on construction of the centre, underlining that a light sustainable industry can be built through the right support to generate income for all local residents. “We need to strengthen this enterprise at any cost, provide assistance so that others can see and join in order to build a sustainable light industry to generate income for all local residents in the area.”

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“Our bus was filled over capacity with people and their bundles,”Gowing writes surprised at their luggage.

“Luckily for my curiosity, a woman – who later introduced herself simply as “Naim’s wife”, in an indicator of the area’s lingering traditional views towards women – was keen to tell the whole minibus about just what was in that pillowy pile of herbage she was bringing back home from Kukës.

It turned out she was talking about cowslips, one of the many medicinal plants that are wild harvested in Albania.

So, do you go out collecting the flowers?” I asked.

The whole minibus answered me: “yes!”

Once my interest had become clear, the journey became an illustrated lecture.

I was learning a new way to parse the countryside.

All of the flowers these collectors found eventually made their way off the mountains and down to Kukës to be sold for export.

Our minibus’ destination was a village called Çajë, pronounced chai. I was travelling to a village called “Tea”.

This area is typical of much of Albania, which is 77% mountainous, and benefits from a Mediterranean climate and land that had little chemical contamination.

All these factors make Albanian wild-gathered herbs particularly sought-after internationally.

at Donika Musaj’s family’s guesthouse, Bujtina Musaj, I hoped I might be greeted with some of Albania’s signature so-called “mountain tea”, a comforting brew, as yellow as lamplight, that’s made from the ironwort plant, Sideritis syriaca.

This family, and those represented on the minibus, were just some of the more than 100,000 Albanian households involved in the cultivation or harvesting of medicinal and aromatic plants. Across the country, that’s roughly one in every seven homes linked to this sector, which generates up to $28 million in exports.

Between 2018 and 2019, that was made up of 12,000 tonnes of cowslips, bilberries and other plants in demand by foreign gastronomy and pharmaceutical markets.

Anila Aliaj from the NGO, Connecting Natural Values with People (CNVP) – which has a project developing this sector with Swedish Embassy funding and currently working with more than 1,000 farmers – explained more about what the collecting sacks and cutlasses make possible.

“This sector gives opportunities to women to have an income and to become economically independent of their husbands,” she said.

“”But women shouldn’t just be workers who gather the plants, but also decision-makers in trading the product,” Aliaj added.

Aishe Ivani, the Çajë village nurse, echoed how medicinal plants help her community with independence.

She also goes out gathering the plants in her spare time, and she says that with access to “the nature God has blessed us with, we’re our own doctors.”

For those of us who find it easier to incorporate into our wellness regime something in the bathroom cabinet rather than the kitchen cupboard, Albania’s mountain plants offer one other hope.

The oil of the so-called “everlasting flower” of helichrysum is another ingredient in “restoring” night serums and “regenerating” facial products.

this is another plant grown in this clear mountain air and used by cosmetics companies around the world for its properties for preserving skin tone.

As I ventured even further north in Albania, at the side of the road I found another group of women with beautiful complexions pulling up leaves. They were working on helichrysum, and I asked if I could take a photograph of them.

“Yes, but please make me look beautiful,” one of them called out with a smile.

Thinking of the precious oils and petals they supply in a direct line to our cosmetics companies; it makes more sense for me – for all of us – to be asking this of them to make us look younger and beautiful.

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State Minister Shalsi saw up close how whole processes ranging from storage to packaging for export took place within a well-organized business premise. This family business exports medicinal plants and herbs mainly to France and other countries around the world, while collecting the raw material from local farmers.

Taking notice of the growing international demand for such products, Minister Shalsi said “the company is exploring plans to automate the process and it needs financial support to press ahead with its business plans.”

“We recommended that they apply with the Agricultural and Rural Development Agency that has been transformed into an irreplaceable stimulus for support in agriculture, offering much-needed advice to hard-working farmers,” Shalsi said.

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According to ARDA, 10 out of 36 investments are startups which created 555 new jobs.

ARDA has provided support for increasing the areas planted with different crops of medicinal plants, which had a major impact on the increase of household income and exports.

In 2020, ARDA supported 5 new investments in honey processing in 5 municipalities leading to the creation of 47 new jobs. Meanwhile, under the direct scheme, ARDA has provided support for 4 484 956 beehives.//a.i/