BLOCKADE AGAINST PLUNDER

Peasants of Voivodina Demand Their Money

AIM Belgrade, 25 December, 1996

Since money for contracted and delivered sunflower, soya and sugar beet has not been paid to them, peasants in Voivodina blocked entrances into oil and sugar refineries, and roads around Zrenjanin

They have our goods, and not we theirs. We will pay the state when it pays us for what is ours. These are the sentences which most concisely illustrate the rebellion of Voivodina peasants who have blocked entrances to oil and sugar refineries, and in some parts of Backa and Banat - especially around Zrenjanin and Zabalj - made obstacles in regional roads. On the first day (on Monday) peasants removed the obstacles at about 16.00 hours. They announced that they would not remove the obstacles any more and that the blockade will last day and night, with the message: those who celebrate Christmas, let them celebrate; they will be on duty at the blockade when the others who celebrate the Orthodox Christmas will be celebrating it, if necessary.

The reason for the protest is money. This year's sunflower and sugar beet crop were delivered to the factories by the peasants who did their obligations from the contract. However, to this day most of them did not get a single dinar. The state seems to have done its best to accelerate the rebellion by sending them warnings because of unpaid taxes. Public revenue administration in an orderly manner calculates interest rates on their tax returns as of 1 November. The peasants know that after such warnings, what follows is forcible collecting taxes. Interest for money which belongs to the peasants but which is still in factories is not calculated. Therefore, the warning of one of the peasants is not surprising: "Who ever comes to collect taxes from me, I am telling him now, I will kill him at the gate".

However this sentence may sound exaggerated and emotional, it illustrates the disposition of the peasants who are fed up of being the state service which provides food for free.

Four demands

The blockade of roads was announced a week before by the president of the Independent Trade Union of Farmers of Serbia, Djordje Grabandic, with a warning that they expected the Republican and the Federal Government to meet four demands of the Trade Union: to pay the peasants for the unpaid crop, to enable them to have their cards for free health protection certified regardless of whether they had paid the taxes, to free them of paying dues and to free socially-owned estates of the obligation to return loans. Garabandic is persistently repeating that the peasants have paid all dues to the state through the price policy and that the estates have also in this way paid back all the loans.

Farmers from Cenej, a village close to Novi Sad - traditionally rich and known for exceptionally fertile land - stress that Sojaprotein from Becej owes them 1,350,000 dinars (this debt cannot easily be calculated into foreign currency because the black market exchange rate of the German mark is not fixed at 3.5 dinars at the moment, as it used to be at the time when they delivered the goods, but reaches up to 3.95 dinars per one mark). So far they were given only 70,000 dinars. In a somewhat sharp discussion about the money, they were told in Sojaprotein that it would be best if they came and took their soya back.

Their experience with sugar refineries is similar. They are not given money for the beet, but they are offered an exchange - sugar for beet. Price parities are extremely unfavourable in this offer. A kilogram of sugar is worth 18 kilos of sugar beet. Then 9.5 per cent of turnover tax is added to the price (and therefore an additional tax is levied on the product for which a tax has already been paid) and transportation costs. This sugar is worth 5.25 dinars for the peasants. Even if they accepted the exchange, they cannot but wonder where they would sell the goods, since sugar is at the moment sold at Novi Sad markets at 3.60 dinars per kilo. It is realistic to expect that if the farmers would also offer sugar on the market, its price would drop even more and further lower the price of the delivered sugar beet.

While they are explaining that the Government is deaf to all their demands ("for five or six years already the authorities think that we are blockheads") they warn that a liter of the liquid for destroying a sugar-beet pest is exchanged at the rate of 200 kilos of sugar. This liquid is by 70 per cent cheaper in Hungary. They also warn that the oil given to them in compensation is more expensive than in the market, and that mineral fertilizers are not only expensive but of very poor quality.

Deaf and Slow Authorities

"Farmers in Voivodina are traditionally real commodity producers and they are used to getting money for their products", President of the Voivodina Cooperative Union, Dr Ljiljana Vasic, explains in a conversation for AIM. She mentions that centralization of measures in agriculture is not good economic policy, in other words that regional specific qualities should be respected. She also notes that farmers in Voivodina do not have the custom to stock their products at home, nor sees any need to push them towards grey economy - into the hands of middlemen, wholesale dealers and others who increase the price of the final product. Dr Ljiljana Vasic insists on the fact that Voivodina was capable of feeding more than 20 million inhabitants with its agricultural production and that there is no reason why it would not be able to do in a state with half that number of inhabitants.

To a question whether factories really have no money, she says that her impression is that factories, in fact, are trying to dictate a rise of prices of their products. She illustrates this allegation with the example of oil. A liter of it is produced out of 2.5 kilos of sunflower, but it is disregarded that oil is not the only product and that oil refineries have also oil seed pellet and a few other products to sell. Even if packing material is expensive, it is not a problem which producers of sunflower can solve.

Voivodina Cooperative Union offered a solution to the Government for the problem arisen by unpaid for oil crops and sugar beet. Traditionally, the Government reacted with a delay, and the meaning of its measures is not quite clear, so it may happen that the proposed solution might completely lose its sense.

Where is the Money

This time, like many times before, farmers are warning that their aim is not expensive food. They insist on the fact that a kilogram of bread should not cost more than two kilos of flour, and a kilogram of meat should not be sold for more than 2.2 kilos of fattened pigs. According to these calculations, a kilogram of bread should not cost more than 48 paras, i.e. the prescribed loaf of 600 grams should cost about 29 paras. Similar is the case with the price of meat, if the fact is taken into account that slaughter houses buy a kilogram of cattle at 7.5 dinars. Farmers also point out the fact that a middle-sized tractor costs as 15 to 20 waggons of wheat, but that its price should not exceed three waggons of wheat. This calculation is derived in order to prove to what extent the farmers' labour was underestimated.

The peasants were also irritated by the fact that factories which owe them the most have invested considerable sums of money into their facilities. Dijamant in Zrenjanin, according to certain data, invested 12.5 million dollars into a new production line, and it owes the peasants about 80 million dinars. Farmers are lamenting for years that their mechanization is obsolete, that their tractors are older than tractor drivers, but it is all in vain.

The state is obviously relying on the fact that, however threatened, the peasants will sow their fields when the time comes, so "weeds do not outgrow maize", that they will take care of the agricultural methods the best they can, that they will smuggle cheaper fertilizers and pesticides, and that they will, of course - regularly pay taxes.

Nobody seems to hear that for years peasants are shouting that they have no money. Just as nobody seems to pay any attention when a peasant from Cenej says: "I would also know how to turn over their 1,350,000 dinars if I had their money, but I don't; they have my money and they are turning them over without paying interest".

Milena Putnik

Frame:

WITHOUT PROTECTION

According to assessments of the Voivodina Cooperative Union, in the fields in the province, 140,000 tons of soya was produced, as well as 350,000 tons of sunflower (meaning 135,000 tons of oil) and 2.5 million tons of sugar beet (which give 270,000 tons of sugar). The value of these commodities is about 1.5 billion dinars. It is assessed that factories invested one third of this sum into the production through various forms of compensations. They paid a part of the money (300-400 million) to the peasants. They still owe the rest.

The problem also occurred when the Federal Government, by wish of sugar refineries, imported about 240,000 tons of yellow and consuming sugar at dumping prices. Oil was also imported. The domestic producers are, therefore, not protected in any way.

In a letter addressed by the Minister of agriculture of the Serbian Government, Nedeljko Sipovac, to the President of the Independent Trade Union of Farmers, Djordje Garabandic, the authorities stammered something about the intention of the Republican Government to demand from the Federal Government to interrupt all import of sugar and edible oil. In this letter, Sipovac states that the National Bank of Yugoslavia is trying to find money ("from real sources") to pay for "certain amounts" of sunflower and sugar beet "which means that partially payment would be made in the form of money".

The form of money in a partial amount is obviously mentioned because the authorities intend to pay the crop of sunflower, soy and sugar beet by compensations: with diesel fuel, mineral fertilizers and fish meal. It is interesting that in this way, through commodities, they will also collect taxes.

In the Voivodina Cooperative Union they stress that the state thought of a way how to collect taxes from peasants who have no money to pay. Since cooperatives have lists of what was sold by whom, they were used to block the accounts of the cooperatives and in this way collect the taxes from peasants.