We will again welcome the crisis autumn without domestic food, writes Večernji list on Monday, noting that imported fruits and vegetables have once again flooded Croatian stores.
Almost exclusively domestic are watermelons, young potatoes, bell peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, cabbage, kale, crystal lettuce, and the majority of tomatoes. Peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots… can only be found here and there from Croatian orchards as weather disasters have further reduced the already insufficient domestic production, the newspaper states.
More than 90 percent of producers operate on instinct, lacking a guaranteed purchase agreement to plan production, and they are not organized to have a stronger negotiating position with traders when purchases begin.
The plots are fragmented, which increases production costs, so in the end, the selling price is lower than the production price, and people consciously work at a loss…
The story of a national agricultural strategy is constantly being circulated, but planned production and planned purchases have yet to be aligned. An additional problem is that the regulations allow imported goods, which are only repackaged in Croatia, to be legally labeled as Croatian origin.
The result of all this is that last year we imported vegetables worth 163.1 million euros, which is 25 percent more than in 2018, and fruits worth 211 million euros (13 percent more). We quickly forgot how at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis we emphasized the necessity of domestic production, reports Večernji list.
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