Professional paper
Challenges for the Croatian agriculture prior to joining the EU: the expected status of farmers, co-operatives and agricultural companies
Stipan Bilić
; Croatian Employers' Association, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
This paper attempts to predict the status of agriculture and especially
the peasants, co-operatives and agricultural companies, after Croatia joins the European Union. The author believes that Croatia
is forced to develop its agriculture according to the EU rules or
according to the dictate of the world market, given that it can not
satisfy its own needs with (ever diminishing) production and due to
the fact that high prices of the food produced in Croatia generate
expenditures twice larger than the ones spent by the population of
the EU. A hundred years ago, the Croatian agriculture was more
like the West European one than it is today, since during the past
fifty years Europe has been solving the issues related to the programming of the production throw common efforts, by protecting
it, by supporting the producer and by organizing the agricultural
market, while Croatia went to almost opposite direction. Today the
disparity concerning the size of the estates and the owners structure,
the production and the competition has grown, which can be recognized in the capability to solve the surplus of the agricultural
population keeping the agricultural areas populated. The Croatian
peasant is producing food for 10 inhabitants while the EU farmer in
agriculturally developed and competitive countries produces enough
food for about 140 inhabitants. The consequence is a 2.75 times smaller expenditure for food in the family budget, the transformation
of these countries from importers to exporters, the increase of the
size of the family farming estate, in average by 5 to 6 times (they
range today from 60 ha with the object to extend to 80 ha at which
point they will become competitive on the world market and will no
longer have the need for state interventions). The second important
factor affecting the survival of the Croatian isolated agriculture is
the world market system where the competition is bigger and the
products even cheaper. The author demystifies the typical image
and demonstrates that Croatia has never had peasants who possessed big holdings and overall property (a hundred years ago
the average size of the 430 000 farming estates in Croatia and Slavonia was smaller than 4 ha); consequently the market needs
were satisfied by large estates products. He points out the serious
issues (while the family farming estate in the developed EU countries
has an annual income of 140 000 euro, the Croatian one has an
income of 3 500 euro; Croatia does not know what are its land
potentials - 3.1 or 1.1 million of ha, etc.) nor is it aware of its
potential advantages. Croatia sees the future of the 25.000 family
farming estates with the size comparable to the Western European
estates, provided that experienced specialists create the new
agricultural policy and that the EU pre-accession funds are used.
The agricultural co-operatives are a prerequisite for family farming
estates to be competitive and to develop. They are well as a strong
ally and an adversary for the agricultural companies whose development is indispensable for the concept of the economy of
scale. The author concludes this rarely critical outline of Croatia's
agriculture's status and challenges by the statement that perhaps
the biggest benefit of joining the EU the freeing of the Croatia's
agriculture of voluntarism and incompleteness as well as doing
business in stable conditions, which will allow for a boring development.
Keywords
family farm holding; agricultural co-operative; agricultural company; agricultural policy; EU; challenges; predictions; stability
Hrčak ID:
32874
URI
Publication date:
4.2.2009.
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