Boskovic: Battle to bring young people back to countryside

PALERMO, BELGRADE - The participants in the Euro-Mediterranean Conference on Agriculture, including Serbian Agriculture Minister Snezana Bogosavljevic-Boskovic, agreed in Palermo Friday that there was an urgent need to bring more young people back to the countryside and to support the development of rural areas in general.

The Serbian minister pointed to problems facing the Serbian countryside and spoke about ways in which, given joint cooperation and exchange of experience, those problems could be overcome faster.

She pointed to unemployment, young people leaving for cities, population ageing and poorly developed infrastructure as the biggest problems in rural areas.

Bogosavljevic-Boskovic said that the Serbian government had adopted a strategy of agricultural development and a set of measures to improve the economic position of farmers, who would play an integral part in the National Rural Development Programme 2015-2020.

The participants in the conference agreed that preserving the countryside, supporting development in rural areas, fighting to bring young people back to the countryside and ensuring a much greater support for young agricultural producers in rural areas and for small family-owned farms were the foremost priorities.

The participants adopted a declaration comprising recommendations and common goals regarding the role of young people in rural areas, competitiveness and quality of agricultural production and efforts to soften negative impacts of climate change in the Euro-Mediterranean region.

The conference brought together agriculture ministers and delegations from 27 countries, and Minister Bogosavljevic-Boskovic met with ministers of agriculture of the EU member-states,...