The experience of microfinance in Albanian agriculture.

Left totally unchanged with land reforms starting and consolidating the alleged smallholding venture of around 1 hectares with low external inputs and labor intensive technology Albanian farming is characterized as being a self sufficient agricultural model. Over the past decade Albania opened its doors to the market economy but that process seems not to have extended and embraced the rural economy. Why? The hypothesis is that land reform effects did not endure and filter through due to typical market inelasticity, along with a strong pillar of this peasant household’s equilibrium: farm structure consolidation during Albanian transition is a peculiar part-time smallholding venture which could be labelled “translational part-time farm”. This subject doesn’t demand credits to purchase land orienting itself toward the market. It demands credit to strengthen its own self-consumption-oriented structure. So the aim of this paper is to consider why the analyzed micro-credit system would contain elements of sustainable development dynamics in Albanian rural environment.