The uproar over the purchase of bread grain is still present. Domestic production is systematically collapsing – these are the words of outraged producers who yesterday called on the authorities in a peaceful protest rally to stop the destruction of domestic production. They ask – why are the gates of the mills not open to receive wheat? They are also seeking answers from the authorities about uncontrolled imports.
The harvest is over, the commotion about the price is not. Farmers claim that they were humiliated by the purchase price. From the authorities, they say, they expected something more than promises.
“From the session and Dodik, I expected that they would say – not to harm the producers or the millers – that they would give us 2, 3 or 5 pfennigs for the delivered wheat. However, they are talking about something for next year,” says Goran Spasojevic, an agricultural producer.
“Why aren’t the gates open to receive wheat, if something has been agreed and completed, regardless of the fact that we are humiliated with the price?” asks Savo Bakajlic, chairman of the Association of Agricultural Producers of Semberija and Majevica.
In the production chain, one would say, there is no sector that is not at risk. Outraged farmers, producers of vegetable. The food is standing. Sales weak, price low. Only imports are increasing.
“It is not normal for 20 trucks with 600 pigs each to enter the area from Semberija to Brcko. And those fatteners take grain from abroad, and the little we have – we have no one to sell it to. That’s why people decided to close the farms, there is no more mathematics here, and the direct responsibility for that lies with Minister Kosarac and the institutions in the Republika Srpska (RS)“, adds Bakajlic.
Goran Simic is a vegetable grower: “It happened that the cost price exceeded the purchase price of vegetables. Vegetables can no longer be sold even at a minimum price, and bearing in mind that agriculture is an ‘open-air factory’, these high temperatures additionally affect the fact that vegetables, especially watermelon, have no price at all and in large quantities – due to imports and all this – remain unsold”.
“The number of milking head is decreasing, milk production is decreasing. We can’t fit into anything. When milk was 65 pfennigs, feed for dairy cows was 45 BAM per 100 kg. Today, the price of milk is 72 pfennigs, and food is 105 BAM,” says farmer Milenko Nikolic.
Record yields, low price. A kilogram of watermelon costs 27 pfennigs. According to one of the producers, he sold a carton of melons for 5 BAM yesterday. They are happy, they say, when they sell at all, because there are days when they have to return unsold goods from the city’s market in to their homes, Federalna writes.
E.Dz.
