COLLAPSE OF AGRICULTURE - AGAIN

Vojvodina without a Penny to its Name

The whole story about lack of money for this year's sowing campaign and about who made money on wheat export is experienced in villages of Vojvodina as new plunder of agriculture

AIM Novi Sad, March 31, 1996

Despite the pacifying statement of Mriko Marjanovic, Prime Minister of Serbia, who said that money for spring sowing would be provided without issuing unsecured money and that he expected successful completion of the most significant national job, nobody in Vojvodina is even trying to conceal data on the catastrophe of the spring sowing campaign. The province secretary of agriculture, Ms. Olga Curovic, M.S., declared on March 26 that out of the 1.2 million hectares which were supposed to be cultivated this spring, so far only 43,200 hectares were sowed, or 3.6 per cent of the planned area. Out of the unploughed 850 thousand hectares of fertile land, just a little over a half was cultivated so far. Wheat sowed last autumn on about 272 thousand hectares (never less) does not look good either, because it was treated with fertilizers only on a quarter of the sowed fields.

Out of the 64,600 hectares planned for sugar cane, only a little over 10 thousand were sowed until now, although optimum agricultural and technical time limits for "sowing sugar" have practically passed. Sowing of vegetables in Vojvodina is also late, since out of the expected 80 thousand hectares, just six thousand hectares were sowed. Olga Curovic says that firms which are engaged in primary agricultural manufacturing are in collapse, that bank accounts of the majority of agricultural combines and cooperatives are blocked, that many have been left without electric power supply and telephone lines due to unpaid bills. Along with all that, out of the first block of shares issued by the Government of Serbia amounting to 108 million dinars, only a little over 11 per cent or 12.8 million dinars' worth were sold. Obviously, those who have made a large profit on wheat export are not interested in extending credits for its production, so there was no answer to the famous question of the Governor of the Federal National Bank Dragoslav Avramovic: where is the money made on wheat?

All large agricultural combines in Vojvodina have remained completely without working assets. Vladimir Vlaovic, Director of "Mitrosrem" from Sremska Mitrovica, one of the largest and richest agricultural firms not only in this but in former Yugoslavia as well, says that its 1500 employees have not received wages since October last year. Specialized banks are not capable of extending credits either for spring sowing, nor have the employees of the famous "Agrobanka" in Belgrade, which enjoys support of the state and the party in power received salaries for the past several months. The National Bank simply has no unappropriated funds for agricultural credits, and the budget of Serbia is more concerned how to pay pensions (to the decisive portion of the Serb electorate) than to try to reallocate a part of the funds from non-economic activities to agriculture.

The broadly publicized republican "agrarian budget" of about a billion dinars obviously is just another "step into the 21st century" which so far has no secured material funds. Plunder of agriculture during the past several years of sanctions has impoverished major socially-owned agricultural producers to such an extent that experts have calculated that per each dinar of obligations which they can pay there are five dinars they cannot secure. This simply shows that the assessment is true that in the course of three years of the sanctions agriculture has been robbed of about 37 billion dollars of income. A part of it is the result of a constant decline of production (20 per cent annually), but majority of it is the result of price alterations to the disavantage of agricultre (there were times when a tractor could be bought for 30 ton of wheat, and nowadays 110 ton are necessary for it), and there is also the fact that investments into agriculture are insufficient (the sphere which earns 28 per cent of the social product gets less than 15 per cent of credits).

When the author of these lines was putting together a book of texts which was published in the beginning of this year called "Does Vojvodina still Exist", he determined that the so-called 1988 "yoghurt revolution" was in a specific way announced by the previous collapse of agriculture. In that 1988, agriculture was also in a major financial crisis. Since it was heavily in debt, participation of interest in the then income of agriculture of Vojvodina reached 84.5 per cent. There was a time when it paid daily interest of 34 per cent, and then drought came and brought about complete collapse of production. After that summer, people came out into the streets of Vojvodina, and the previous provincial authorities which were in favour of greater autonomy were overthrown. Nowadays, one cannot but wonder against whom would "wrath of the people" turn if a catastrophe in agriculture of Vojvodina occurred again?

The opposition parties in Vojvodina, but those outside it as well, are starting to mention the need of revival of autonomy of Vojvodina, in order to accumulate the power of discontent which is nowadays growing in villages around the province. This is the context in which the "Manifesto for Vojvodina" was received with considerable attention. It was publicized this winter by thirty odd minor political groups and non-governmental organizations. Even the ruling party itself, the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS), as well as numerous city organizations of the Yugoslav Associated Leftists (JUL) in Vojvodina, are flirting with the idea of a civic society - so as not to be caught unprepared with an outburst of discontent because of the situation agriculture is in. From the aspect of macro-politics and macro-economy, collapse of agriculture and growing discontent of peasants not only in Vojvodina but in the whole of Serbia, reaches out to some of the very essential issues in the election strategy of Milosevic's headquarters. The formula according to which peasants should support insufficiently employed workers, and agriculture should be a source of a new investment wave in Serbia - obviously cannot hold any more, neither in the economic nor in the political sense.

Dimitrije Boarov (AIM)