The wheat harvest has started these days. Apart from the fact that the harvest is 30 percent lower due to bad weather conditions, the farmers welcome this year’s harvest in uncertainty, as there is no indication of the purchase price of wheat yet. According to announcements, it will be twice as low as last year. Due to the drop in the price of bread grain on the world market, flour has been getting cheaper for some time. This, however, is not the case with bread and other bakery products. On the contrary, their price increase is announced.
Sowing corn, wheat, barley, oats and other field crops is a third more expensive than last year. Ranko Sarajlić from the town of Laminci, who sowed cereals on more than 300 hectares, says that the calculation is clear. This year, like other farmers, will end in a big loss.
“The cost of wheat production for 2022/2023 is about 2.5 thousand marks per hectare. The yield will not even be five tons. The purchase price will not be even 30 pfennigs. On average, that means 1,500 marks plus incentives of 500 marks from the Ministry of Agriculture. That means, somewhere around two thousand marks on the top of your head. So, few producers will not settle this year”.
Bad weather resulted in lower yields, but also lower quality.
“I think that the yields are twice as low as last year, and the prices are twice as low. What am I going to do, I won’t even sell it. I will only do it for my needs”.
The low purchase price of wheat, which is half of what it was last year, and the drop in grain prices on world markets resulted in a drop in flour prices, which dropped by 20 percent in the last two months. And, it could get even cheaper when the millers get rid of their stock.
“If the price of wheat remains at the current level, let’s say, around 200 euros per ton, as the millers use up their expensive stocks, they will have to adjust their prices to the price of wheat. So, it is possible that there will be another wave of cheapening of mill products “, Zoran Kos, said president of the Association of Millers of the Republika Srpska.
“Never cheaper grain and flour, I say never higher wages. Never higher costs. Therefore, it is not to be expected that bakery products will become cheaper, but even certainly in half a year, if this trend continues with wage growth, it can happen to further increase bread prices. Therefore, we are traveling towards European wages and European bread prices”, said Sasa Trivic, President of the Union of Employers’ Associations of the RS.
Regardless of the fact that the purchase price of wheat is low and that flour has become cheaper, there is no indication that bakery products will become cheaper. On the contrary. An increase in prices is expected.
Although everyone has their own calculation, citizens are outraged and do not understand how flour can become cheaper and bread more expensive.
“Everyone makes excuses that imports are much more expensive. Now we are witnessing that grain is also much cheaper on the world stock market. That oil is on the world stock market, that the barrel has become cheaper a long time ago. Here, the prices have been slightly reduced in our country. But, somehow, we citizens we don’t feel it, but we pay the toll of all price increases again”, explained Murisa Maric, Consumer Protection Association “Don”.
No matter how paradoxical it sounds, cheaper flour, and even fuel, does not automatically mean cheaper bread. This time the excuse is workers’ wages.
