Competitiveness between figures and metaphors; are farmers apple producers enough competitive

Myslym Osmani, Rezear Kolaj, Petar Borisov and Ekaterina Arabska

Abstract: There is a growing concern over competitiveness everywhere, especially among farmers’. The research focuses on the competitiveness or ability to compete of small farmers’ apple–producers in the Dibra region, in Albania. Its purpose is to assess the level of competitiveness of farmers’ and to identify major factors that determine this level. Primary data obtained through direct observation of farmers’ and statistical methods such as groupings, descriptive statistics, graphs, and statistical methods such as non–parametric correlation were used to conduct the research. To analyze the competitiveness, we use the data on the difficulties and problems that farmers’ face while selling their produce. The study reveals a very low ability to compete, and major reasons for this are unfair competition and the functioning of the market, high costs of production and marketing, lack of state support, especially for the use of quality inputs and price subsidies, very limited resources to obtain loans for capital investment and working capital, but to some extent also because of the reduced the negotiating power due to lack of information and lack of collective action. Finally, some political implications along the lines of results provided by the study have been outlined, in order to enhance the farmers’ ability to compete.

Keywords: agriculture; competition; competitiveness; cost; marketing; state support

Date published: 2021-09-13