We are again witnessing claims that agriculture will be shut down, despite multimillion-dollar budget allocations. One of the reasons is that the money went to those who should not be entitled to incentives. Another reason might be because they suffer the consequences of the pandemic, the war in Ukraine,and the increase in the price of raw materials. But in this area, not everything is so black.
If the Government of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) does not intervene with at least twenty million BAM by the end of August, agricultural production is about to disappear, members of agricultural associations from seven cantons said at a meeting in Travnik.
Dzevahid Babic, president of the Assembly of the Association of Agricultural Producers of the FBiH, points out that this is enough to be at a positive zero.
“It looks like a threat, but it’s not. If we look at the dairy industry, we can see that the milk has fallen. So, the number of heads on farms has decreased – you will get the shutdown of agricultural production,” warned Admir Kahriman, president of the Association of Agricultural Producers of FBiH.
On the other hand, Dzelil Sakic from the Travnik settlement of Turbe claims that, despite this year’s drought and the significant increase in the prices of raw materials, it is possible to make a decent living with agriculture and that it will not be extinguished. Because, along with the monthly sale of five and a half thousand liters of milk, there is also an incentive from the state, which, he says, is a farmer’s mother, not stepmother.
“35 pfennigs from the state per liter of milk, plus calves… I see that I can make good money and I see my future and the future of my children here,” he says.
Agricultural experts claim that the support for agricultural production should and must be greater, but they also point out that, unlike previous years, this year’s federal support for agriculture could also be compared to the European Union (EU) practices.
“106 million BAM in incentives, plus 4 million in fuel subsidies in agriculture – that’s a dramatic increase. The budget in the FBiH is much larger than in the Republika Srpska (RS)“, explains Ahmed Dzubur, president of the Committee for Agriculture, Water Management and Forestry of the House of Representatives of the FBiH.
Samir Duranovic is an agricultural producer from Buzim: “In Austria, the purchase price of milk is 50 euro cents, in the Czech Republic it is 37-38, in Hungary, it is 44 considering the fact that there they do not have any incentive per liter of milk, they have an incentive per hectare”.
We are all at a loss and in constant dependence on imports, but also increasingly frequent announcements of protests and abandonment of agricultural production. It is high time that agriculture, instead of buying votes, becomes a real economic branch.
