Despite expert warnings about rising food costs and the need to preserve fertile land, Serbia continues to repurpose agricultural areas for industrial, residential and infrastructure projects.
Between the two most recent censuses, Serbia has lost 1.2 million hectares of arable land.
Slobodan Ilić from Majur near Šabac is an example of someone who values his land. With several hundred hectares and 78 cows, he notes that 320 hectares of what used to be grazing land have been converted into construction sites. “We used to graze cattle and harvest fruit there as children during school vacations,” Ilić recounts.
In the Danube District, approximately 45,000 hectares of high-quality arable land are used primarily for growing corn, fruits, and vegetables. Goran Pavlović, a member of the City Council in Smederevo, asserts that the city adheres to regulations protecting agricultural land and emphasizes that poor land management, not the land itself, is the problem.
Dr. Aleksandar Leposavić from the Institute of Fruit Growing in Čačak highlights the importance of agricultural production over industrial production and argues for increased processing to improve living standards.
Serbia has 4.075 million hectares of arable land, with 3.5 million hectares actively cultivated. Jordana Ninkov from the Institute of Crop and Vegetable Agriculture in Novi Sad warns that while land can be lost quickly to construction, it takes thousands of years to regenerate. Land is deemed a non-renewable resource, crucial for food production.
Agroeconomist Milan Prostran notes that the EU loses land equivalent to Berlin’s size annually due to erosion and stresses the importance of developing infrastructure on less fertile land to conserve valuable resources.
Historically, agroeconomists argue that humans have always valued fertile land, building on its edges rather than on the fields themselves.
