The deadline set by producers for the authorities to agree on the purchase price of this year’s bread grain expired yesterday, and the producers have decided – on Monday they will blockade the customs terminal.
Deadline expired – decision made. Producers no longer want to agree to low purchase prices that, as they say, do not even cover basic production costs. Farmers are taking to the streets.
“On Friday, a number of us will file this request with the RS Ministry of the Interior and inform them that we will block the customs terminal on Monday at 10:00 a.m. So, on Monday at 10:00 a.m., the customs terminal will be blocked for all freight traffic,” said Boško Radić, president of the Association of Agricultural Producers ‘Sela Semberije’.
Producers have previously, on several occasions, called on the relevant ministry to convene a meeting at which representatives of the Chamber of Commerce would also be present – in order to reach an agreement on an acceptable price for wheat.
“The price they proposed of 32 pfennigs is very low and does not cover the investment, and we cannot even talk about profits. The price, in order to cover production costs and for that production to be sustainable, should not be below 42,” says producer Bogoljub Cvijetinović.
“If you bought bread, flour, wheat 4 years ago for 64 pfennigs and had cheaper bread, how can it happen now that you are offering some abnormal price, and keep bread at 2 marks? Buy it as you want, stick the prices on the mills and lower the bread to 80 pfennigs,” adds Radić.
The blockade, they say, is just the beginning. If the institutions continue to remain silent, the producers are announcing more radical moves. For them, this is a fight – not only for the price of wheat, but also for the survival of domestic production.
