In the middle of the harvest season, the Government of Robert Golob has still not managed to explain how it intends to implement the announced measures in the field of food commodities. Namely, the Prime Minister announced at one of his previous press conferences that the state would purchase all of the Slovenian wheat, but he did not mention the price, the required quality, from whom exactly the country would be buying wheat, or what the financial terms of the purchase will be. As a result, chaos now reigns in the entire food chain.
This is the second time in a row that the Prime Minister has caused a chaotic situation to ensue with his reckless communication. First, he caused chaos at petrol stations with his politically naïve and completely ruthless announcement of the regulation of motor fuel prices. This resulted in a shortage of motor fuels throughout the country, and a strike was even announced by the truckers. Golob blamed the traders of oil derivates for the chaos. He then moved on to food products and, with a belated and imprecise announcement of planned measures, upset the farmers who still do not know what will happen to their crops in the middle of the harvest, which is the most important event of the season.
On Tuesday, a press conference related to this topic was held, which was organised by one of the largest grain buyers in our country, the Panvita group. The latter was represented by Branko Virag, board member, director of the company Panvita Kmetijstvo (Panvita Farming) and President of the sector for agricultural companies at the Chamber of Commerce of Slovenia, who told the media that they are very uncertain about how to proceed, due to the uncertain conditions currently prevailing on the market.
As we know, the government announced the purchase of all Slovenian wheat without any additional explanations. What will the price be? What will be the required quality of wheat for the purchase? What will be the financial terms of the buyout? Who will the state actually buy from? Directly from farmers, or perhaps the food processing industry? The government of Robert Golob, together with the Minister of Agriculture Irena Šinka, still has no answers to all these questions, even though we are already in the middle of the harvest season.
This year, wheat is growing on over 28,000 hectares of land in Slovenia, which is slightly less than in the previous years. 140,000 to 150,000 tons of wheat could be grown in these areas, which would cover 80 to 90 percent of all our domestic needs. However, since we do not use all the wheat for bread, we are about 60 percent self-sufficient.
Golob announced low purchase prices
With his undetailed announcements, Golob not only caused the food processing industry to become uncertain but the farmers as well, who fear that the purchase prices offered by the Agency of the Republic of Slovenia for Commodity Reserves would be too low. The current price for a ton of wheat Is around 340 euros, and farmers expect to get at least 400 euros for it in the given situation.
Andrej Černigoj: We are all waiting for further explanations
A former Member of Parliament from the New Slovenia party (Nova Slovenija), Andrej Černigoj, also responded to the failed strategy of dealing with the rising prices and wondered: “Will the wheat wait for the conclusion of the public contract? How will they reach the market price with a public contract? To me, this seems rather amateurish and doomed to fail in advance. And who will be blamed for it? The farmers? We are all waiting for further explanations.”
Andrej Žitnik
