Projects

The Association uses two main channels to fund development projects focussing on reindeer herding.

One of them is the EU project funding and it is usually applied from the Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment. Funding is mainly applied from programs such as European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and European Social Fund (ESF). Interreg, TACIS and Kolarctic –programs are used for international projects.

Another important source for funding is the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. The MAKERA-funds are usually for given for writing reports or research.

Reindeer husbandry has used all the forms of funding mentioned above in the 2000s. There are around 60 EU and around 20 MAKERA funded projects as well as another 20 projects funded from other sources. Association’s projects focussed on three main lines (small production, reindeer farm tourism and IT) in the beginning of the 2000s. Nowadays there are 12 different lines in the Association’s project map.  In addition to the previously mentioned, they include training, quality, feeding, international cooperation, marketing, wellbeing of the herders, large carnivore, reindeer and traffic, and land usage.

There has been around 10 million euros that has been used to develop reindeer husbandry. Project funding has enabled reindeer husbandry to test, develop and train – to keep up in the pace of the future.