The meeting of producers and millers in Bosnia and Herzegovina could not be reached. While farmers demand that the price of wheat be 82 pfennigs per kilogran, millers are willing to pay 60, guided by the purchase price of wheat that Serbia will offer to its farmers. They will try to reach an agreement again on June 28.
The harvest has begun. Producers do not have storage facilities for storing wheat. They were forced to hand her over immediately. And the price has not been agreed. Due to the extremely expensive production this year, farmers are asking for 82 pfennigs per kilogram. Anything below that, they say, is unacceptable.
“You can’t work in the red every year. Take into account that last year 100 kg of KAN cost 140 BAM, this year 200 marks. That is a huge difference,” says Bosko Radic, president of the Association of Agricultural Producers of the village of Semberija.
“These are figures and parameters of wheat costs based on the price of raw materials, fuel, and everything else and full agro-technical measures, and no one likes that, but there are also prices in the area,” says Savo Bakajlic, president of the Association of Agricultural Producers of Semberija.
“It would be realistic for that price to be as high as it is in Serbia, to add transport costs and to determine that way,” Radic added.
The millers do not have a defined position on the issue of the purchase price. They will form it, they say, based on the price in the region.
“On Monday, Serbia should come out with a purchase price, which I think will be around 310 euros, a little more expensive in Croatia. 310 euros, transferred to our money is 60 pfennigs per kilogram,” said the owner of the mill, Cedomir Pavlovic.
The next round of negotiations is scheduled for Tuesday, June 28, at the City Administration, where they are asking the mill processors for guarantees that the purchase price of wheat will be the same as in Serbia, but that transport costs in the amount of three to four pfennigs per kilogram will be added. The Agricultural Fund of the city of Bijeljina will also provide three pfennigs per kilogram for the delivered wheat. And with the encouragement of the relevant ministry of 400 BAM per hectare, an adequate purchase price would be provided.
“We will insist on a concrete price of wheat, which will be in favor of producers. We appreciate the price in the region, but we must also think about our agricultural production,” emphasizes the mayor of Bijeljina Ljubisa Petrovic.
The yield this year, anyway, will be reduced by 30% compared to last year, because farmers were not able to apply all agro-technical measures. But the quality of this year’s genus is good.
“The biggest problem is the commodity reserves, if there were a different picture, it would be like this. We are left to ourselves like this, we enter the harvest at 40 degrees under the clear sky, and we don’t know, as every year, anything,” Bakajlic added.
“One of the basic problems of agricultural production in the Reoublika Srpska is that we have ruined commodity reserves and that due to the lack of commodity reserves we cannot have stability in the market. We therefore have a range in the prices of bread, flour and all other foodstuffs.”
Due to the uncertain purchase, farmers say that they are negotiating the export of about 50,000 tons of wheat to Turkey. They are asking the state ministry of trade to introduce a measure banning the import of wheat for 120 days, until all domestic wheat is bought.
