Estonian Rural Development Plan 2004-2006

The Estonian Rural Development Plan (ERDP) is a national cross-sectoral plan of Estonia for the period 2004-2006. Its main objective is to regenerate peoples ability to cope with rural life and to ensure sustainable and regionally balanced development.
The ERDP aims to make agriculture and forestry more productive and sustainable. To this end, it is planning to increase agricultural producers interest in sustainable use of environment, including introduction of more environmentally friendly technologies and techniques, maintaining biological diversity and natural landscapes; to bring agricultural production into accordance with the environmental standards of the Community; to raise farmers awareness in the field of economy and environmental protection; to promote awareness of environmental requirements arising from the Water Policy Framework Directive; to decrease of water pollution from manure handling; and to retain and develop economic, ecological and social values and functions of forests.
Further, for reducing rural poverty, the document targets to slow down decreasing agricultural employment rate; to maintain land use in less favoured areas and areas with environmental restrictions at least on the level prior to accession and decrease the area of abandoned agricultural land; to increase employment and income level in rural areas through developing rural enterprises including support to activities into non-agricultural micro enterprises and developing of small enterprises that are using local resources/materials or offer services in rural areas; and to support local initiative based activities that enable creation of new jobs, additional incomes and general economic activities in rural areas.
To enable more inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems, the ERDP seeks to alleviate farmers financial burden of reorganisation connected with joining EU, increase their economic viability and ability to invest; to advance competitiveness of micro enterprises and balance the effect of area-based subsidies favouring large-scale producers; to increase the competitiveness of agricultural production by promoting technological progress, by developing agriculture matching different requirements; to improve the competitiveness of processing agricultural produce; to create conditions for integrated land improvement; and to provide farm advisory and extension services.
In order to increase the resilience of livelihoods to disasters, the ERDP aims to reduce the risk of winter soil loss due to water and wind erosion on agricultural lands; to reduce the risk of water pollution caused by the leaching of nitrogen and/or winter soil loss and to increase biodiversity by creating winter habitats for invertebrates and birds.
Implementation of the ERDP shall be conducted pursuant to the requirements of the EU. Co-ordination and administration of the monitoring and evaluation of all ERDP measures will be the concern of a Ministry of Agriculture of Estonia with cooperation to the Agricultural Registers and Information Board. The Republic of Estonia in cooperation with the European Commission will conduct ex-post evaluation after the end of the program.