Dairy farmers set an ultimatum: State aid or PROTEST and SHUTTING DOWN FARMS

Milk producers in Serbia will send proposals to Minister of Agriculture, Jelena Tanaskovic, for state aid in order to help the farms survive.

If the proposal is rejected, they will organize protests and accelerate the shutdown of farms, as a member of the task force for negotiations with the competent ministry, Dejan Trajkovic, said today.

He pointed out that farmers from all over Serbia at last night’s meeting in Bogatic agreed to propose to Tanaskovic that the state should pay off debts based on premiums and subsidies as soon as possible, and he recalled that she had promised that these debts would be settled by the end of last year.

„We have several proposals about how the state could aid the survival of cattle breeding in Serbia, we will give a deadline of about ten days for the realization to begin, and if the Ministry of Agriculture refuses this, we will organize a protest and if there are still no results, we will begin to quickly shut down the farms,“ Trajkovic, who owns a farm in the vicinity of Pancevo, said.

Milk producers, as he explained, also suggested that the premium for milk should be increased from RSD 10 per liter to RSD 20.

According to him, farmers received a premium of 15 dinars per litre in two quarters last year, but it has now been reduced to 10 dinars.

He added that another proposal was to allow milk export and reduce enormous import and to import only the missing quantity, instead of the quantities that lowered the price of domestic milk.

Izvor: Beta

Foto: Unsplash/Pixabay