BAKU, Azerbaijan, Mar.7/p>
By Fidan Babayeva - Trend:
The volume of lending to agriculture, forestry, and fishing in Azerbaijan amounted to 573 million manat ($337 million) in January 2021, Trend reports citing data from the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA).
Lending to this sector increased by 32.7 million manat ($19.2 million) or 6.1 percent compared to January 2020.
One of the sectors of agriculture in Azerbaijan with a large export potential, contributing to the inflow of foreign currency into the country, is the cultivation of hazelnuts. For bringing the products to new markets, various measures are being taken to increase the production of hazelnuts using new technologies.
The Ministry of Economy said that in the structure of work carried out in this direction, the creation of enterprises for processing hazelnuts based on modern technologies has a special place.
One of such enterprises is the Agrarco LLC hazelnut processing factory under construction in the Zagatala district. Currently, the work at the enterprise is at the completion stage.
The plant, capable of processing 7,000 tons of hazelnuts per year, will create 150 jobs.
Besides, this week, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) published an animal health and production strategy for Europe and Central Asia, following the main aim to improve the animal health and production practices of smallholders and reduce the threat of antimicrobial resistance.
According to the FAO’s Partnership and Liaison Office in Azerbaijan, the strategy, covering the period of 2020–2025, presents FAO’s work in the region in three main priority areas – animal health, animal production, and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) – along with seven cross-cutting issues, among them gender, environmental sustainability, community farming as a business, and coordination with other international organizations.
As a critical step for animal health, the strategy helps countries in the region apply the One Health approach to clearly understand which disease or diseases have a major economic and public health importance.
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