(source: Sme)
Most large retail chains in Slovakia have supported the Agriculture and Rural Development Ministry’s call to sell food from local Slovak producers. Small producers will thus be able to supply their products to stores belonging to retail chains within a radius of 50 kilometres. At the same time the Agriculture Ministry is preparing a list of local food suppliers for retail chains, said the ministry’s spokesman Vladimír Machalík as cited by the TASR newswire.
“Our goal is to support small and medium-sized food producers,” said Agriculture Minister Gabriela Matečná (a nominee of the Slovak National Party). “Regional shelves will provide small and medium-sized producers with opportunities to sell their products, to develop and employ people. Meanwhile, consumers will receive a larger supply of quality domestic products from their own regions.”
The ministry also expects that this will increase the self sufficiency of Slovakia in food production.
It has already launched the process of selecting food suppliers. The aim in the first phase is to find the hundred best-prepared producers able to comply with basic requirements, such as packaging, providing product description labels and EAN codes and dealing with logistics. The project, which should serve in its initial phase as a model for other possible suppliers, will be up and running by Christmas at the latest.
