Author: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.

Published: 2020-01-23

Total Pages: 59

ISBN-13: 9251321221

Agriculture has an important role in North Macedonia and in 2017 it accounted for 7.9 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the country. However, agriculture’s share of the country’s GDP has been decreasing for the past decade, and the need to improve agricultural productivity has become an important challenge. For this purpose, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Economy (MAFWE) with the support of FAO initiated to adapt FAO’s agro-ecological zones (AEZ) methodology to local needs in the country. The effort was undertaken by forming a wide technical working group with representatives from academia, the Hydro-Meteorological Service, State Statistics Office, and the Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning. The delineation of agro-ecological zones specific to crops presents a useful preliminary evaluation of the country’s agricultural potential and provides a tool for regional and environmentally sustainable development planning. Agro-ecological zoning refers to the division of an area of land into land resource mapping units, having a unique combination of landform, soil and climatic characteristics, and/or land cover having a specific range of potentials and constraints for agricultural land use. This atlas shows the results collected during this study and the related developed maps.