Glamocic Gives No Date for 17,000 Dinar Seed Subsidy
Vojvodina farm unions say a meeting with Agriculture Minister Dragan Glamocic ended without a payment date for the seed subsidy, though the calendar says it is due this month and next.
The Association of Agricultural Unions of Vojvodina said on September 18 that a meeting with Agriculture Minister Dragan Glamocic still left it without a payment date for the 17,000 dinar (around 145 euros) seed subsidy, even though the calendar says the payment is due this month and in October.
Association president Miklos Nadj told the Beta news agency that the payment deadline was one of the main issues raised when union representatives met with the minister two days earlier, around September 16, but that no concrete answer came out of it.
“We didn’t get the answer we were expecting. Glamocic said he would do everything to make the payment happen as soon as possible, but without a specific date,” Nadj said.
The Ministry of Agriculture did not respond to a Beta inquiry either, on exactly when payment of the 17,000 dinar seed subsidy would start. The amount and the deadline apply to the current season under the calendar, and it is not stated in the available sources whether the subsidy is calculated per hectare or per farm.
The missing date is not the only problem grain and oilseed growers are carrying into autumn. Nadj says around 50 percent of producers in the association have not repaid what they owe for inputs and spring sowing, so the uncertainty over the subsidy adds to that burden just as the new season begins.
For a farm waiting on the payment, the September and October deadline falls right when growers need to buy seed and other inputs for autumn sowing. When the subsidy is late, a producer either puts off that purchase or covers it out of pocket or with fresh borrowing, all while last season’s debt is still unpaid.
Why Isn’t Vojvodina Exporting Sunflower to Hungary?
Sunflower is fetching 48 dinars per kilogram (around 0.41 euros) in Serbia, while buyers in Hungary are paying 58 dinars per kilogram (around 0.49 euros), about 20.8 percent more. That 10 dinar per kilogram gap would mean real extra income for growers, but exporting is not an option.
“Unfortunately, we have no way to export sunflower to Hungary,” Nadj said.
The price domestic buyers are offering, he added, does not even cover production costs, mainly because yields were so low after a dry summer.
How Much the Drought Cut the Harvest
Fields closer to the Danube produced between 1,000 and 1,300 kilograms of sunflower per jutro (57 ares, or 0.57 hectares), while the harvest in Banat and the rest of Vojvodina was lower, between 700 and 800 kilograms per jutro. Soybean yields were even weaker, around 300 kilograms per jutro. Some growers, according to Nadj, gave up on harvesting altogether because hiring a combine would have cost more than the crop was worth.
This year, Nadj says, fruit orchards did well, but growers with large plantations still did not see the income to match, because labor for picking was expensive, eating into what should have been a good harvest.
The combination of a smaller harvest and a lower purchase price means the same hectare brings in less this year than last, while the costs of sowing, fuel and harvesting stayed at last year’s level or rose. That, Nadj says, is why some growers in the association are now struggling to cover even their current costs, not just their old debt.
Nadj believes corn, sunflower and soybean producers are on the edge of collapse. For some farms, he says, the ministry’s next move, above all a firm date for the seed subsidy payment, will decide whether they go into the new season carrying extra debt or without it.
