In the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH), efforts will be made to cultivate even more land areas and sow as many grains as possible, such as wheat and barley, which is especially important considering the current situation in the world and possible food shortages.
The Head of the Department for Agricultural Policy and Analysis in the Sector for Agriculture and Food Industry of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Water Management and Forestry, Hanefija Topuz, said that in the FBiH, the population’s needs for wheat cannot be met with their own production at the moment, but they can for fruit, vegetables, milk, poultry products and the like.
”If we were to sow all the arable land, we cannot meet our needs for wheat, which is currently the most relevant. This year is particularly good for wheat, but we can still meet only a certain percentage of our needs,” he said.
However, as Topuz said, in agriculture as well as in other areas of the economy, there is an evident lack of labor because young people leave the villages in search of better living conditions, and the land remains uncultivated.
”We are looking for ways to stimulate these people. Every producer who has produced something has an incentive. We give additional stimulation if it is a younger male person or if it is a woman. This process is ongoing, we will see how successful we will be in this. We are trying to preserve as many agricultural producers as possible because the situation is very difficult,” Topuz emphasized.
According to Hanefija Topuz, the FBiH Ministry of Agriculture, Water Management, and Forestry received the largest budget ever to support agricultural producers this year.
”The Federal Parliament and the FBiH Government were sensitive to the field of agriculture and we received about 19 million BAM more than last year. Cantons and municipalities allocated money from their budgets, so this year a solid amount of money was allocated and everything was invested in support of agricultural producers in order to produce as much food as possible,” he added.
According to the information from the field, he says, the yields are good, and they will be the same for the rest of the season.
”We can be satisfied, considering the conditions under which we worked. We need to work on additional activation of land areas, which, unfortunately, are still largely uncultivated,” Topuz concluded.
