The new Agriculture and Rural Development Strategy for the period from 2021 to 2027 is an attempt to improve the standards in Bosnia and Herzegovina to adapt agriculture to the common agricultural policy of the European Union. BH farmers are not against the new Strategy, but they emphasize that the planned changes in the method of payment of incentives will lead to mass shutdown of farms.
Farmers from the area of Tuzla Canton discussed the announcements of changes in the incentive policy for farmers foreseen by the new Agriculture and Rural Development Strategy. This Strategy is currently in the form of a draft and should soon be before the representatives of the Federal Parliament. Farmers now receive incentives per liter of milk delivered to dairies, and from next year they should receive incentives per milking head and hectare of cultivated land.
“As we read in the draft, the throat will be financed, and a hectare, between 600 KM and 800 KM, which is very disastrous. Here, for me as a producer who produces 200,000 liters at the level of one year, where I will lose some 60% to 70% of incentives for just one liter of milk,” says Eldin Glibanović, Association of Milk Producers of Tuzla Canton.
The new strategy attempts to create an agricultural environment in our country based on the practice in the European Union, and BiH farmers believe that this will have a disastrous impact on domestic agriculture.
“All the prices went down, however, the purchase price of milk fell, and now it stands at around 68 pfennigs. This is the price at which a farmer cannot produce a liter of milk.”, explains Aljo Mevkić, Živinice farm.
Agricultural experts believe that the new Strategy was created by people who do not know the current situation in BiH well enough farms. The first complaint is that, instead of 2021, 2023 should be taken as the reference year for the payment of incentives.
“How these funds will be allocated is a big problem because we do not have the situation on the ground as stated in the Strategy, because on the ground we have a very unorganized register, that is, the cadastre of agricultural land, first of all when it comes to ownership, then the problem of the entity line because our people do not have a lease agreement for all the areas they sow,” say Suad Selimović, Chamber of Commerce of Tuzla Canton.
Farmers say that there is a unified position of all associations from the territory of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in relation to the draft Strategy of Agriculture and Rural Development. Associations will demand urgent talks with government representatives at all levels in order to find the best solutions for the sustainability of agricultural production. If the Strategy is adopted in the working version, they announce, farmers will organize mass protests.
