Serbia could export USD 10 billion worth of food by 2020, participants of a Tanjug roundtable on issues in agriculture said on Tuesday.
In order to achieve that, Serbia’s agriculture must be properly prepared to answer the challenges of the open market, the participants stated.
Minister of Agriculture and Trade Dusan Petrovic said 2012 is a year of change for Serbia’s agriculture.
The implementation of capital agriculture projects began last week, with irrigation being the largest of them, receiving around EUR 5 billion of investments over then next four years, he explained.
There are plans to irrigate 1.1 million hectares of farmland in the next four years, which is six times more than the present figure, he added.
It will increase the annual food production by EUR 2 billion, he pointed out.
Serbia has enormous room to increase its agricultural production thanks to significant natural resources, the minister stated, adding that the country raised its food export by USD 1 billion in the last two years.
Last year’s export of food and agricultural products stood at USD 2.7 billion, with a surplus of USD 1.3-1.4 billion.
Half of Serbia’s agricultural export goes to the EU market, 45 percent go to the CEFTA region, while the remaining 5 percent go to Russia and other countries, Petrovic remarked, adding that an increase in the export of meat and dairy products was recorded in the first quarter of 2012.
Adviser to the Serbian Chamber of Commerce president Vojislav Stankovic said food production was worth USD 6 billion in 2011, and that the 2012 export was expected to reach USD 3.5 billion.
Primary production needs stimulation, he believes, calling also for efforts to improve the food industry and processing facilities so that export would include products that have undergone higher levels of processing.
Professor of the Belgrade Faculty of Agriculture Miladin Sevarlic said Serbia’s agriculture must be helped to raise its competitiveness and quality of its offer, regardless of who runs the related ministry, in order to be ready for 2014, when the EU will completely liberalize the trade involving agricultural and food products.
It is going to be a matter of survival for Serbia’s farmers, because they will face strong competition, not only in Europe, but on the domestic market as well, he noted.
Head of the Union of Agricultural Producers from Sremska Mitrovica Zlatan Djuric stressed that the most important thing was that the new subsidy model included a huge number of farms, explaining it was also significant that the commodity reserve mechanism had been activated to intervene on the market.
Becej farmer Vasa Dzigurski said the measure of RSD 14,000 per hectare “was perhaps not bad, but it was taken advantage of to its utmost,” and underscored that everyone had to be included in the legal flow of economy, because it was the only way to move forward.
Source Emg
