ZAGREB, 25 May 2022 - Small farmers in the EU could soon receive up to €15,000 in one-off aid and agricultural SMEs up to €100,000 thanks to a Croatian initiative.

Croatia launched the initiative at a meeting of agriculture ministers last month and it was supported by 13 member states.

According to the initiative, due to the hikes in energy, fertiliser and animal feed prices, every member state would pay small farmers and agricultural SMEs up to 5% of their budgets as part of the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development for 2011 and 2022.

The Commission endorsed the initiative and last week proposed a decree which the agriculture ministers discussed on Tuesday.

"We expect co-legislators to swiftly ratify this proposal, after which we will amend the rural development programme which will enable emergency aid for Croatian farmers and SMEs in the agricultural and food sector," Croatian Minister Marija Vučković said after yesterday's meeting.

In Croatia's case, the 5% amounts to a little over €30 million in additional EU funds.

The ministers also discussed the consequences of Russia's aggression on Ukraine, a big exporter of farm products which cannot export them via its Black Sea ports due to Russia's blockade. The EU is looking for a solution to transport the goods by rail and road to the EU and then to the nearest ports for dispatch elsewhere in the world.

The EU does not depend on import from Ukraine but is trying to prevent hunger in Africa and the Middle East, which are big importers of Ukrainian cereals.

Vučković said Croatia was drawing up a proposal for bringing those goods to its Adriatic ports, from where they could be exported to northern Africa. "We are mapping our ports, our rail network and silos which could contribute to the export of Ukrainian products."

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ZAGREB, 2 Feb 2022 - The agriculture ministry has prepared two programmes to alleviate the impact of growing costs on farms and fisheries.

The aid scheme for mitigating costs during the spring sowing season is worth HRK 80 million, while the aid scheme for fishermen and livestock farmers is worth HRK 50 million.

The draft aid schemes will be forwarded in the coming days to the European Commission to give its consent and comments, the ministry reported on Wednesday.

Apart from these two packages, the ministry is also seeking a way to help cattle breeders who have not been entitled to the support under the previous HRK 170 million scheme aid.

The livestock breeders who met the conditions under this programme have received aid in December and January, the ministry said.

(€1 = HRK 7.524059)

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ZAGREB, 8 Dec, 2021 - The survival of Croatia's agriculture largely depends on digitisation, the key to increase productivity and the driver of the development of domestic production, for which HRK 77 million is envisaged for investments, a conference on digital farming heard on Wednesday.

Addressing the conference, Agriculture Minister Marija Vučković said that digital technology has the potential to significantly improve farming and that the digital transformation of Croatia's agriculture has been included in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NPOO). 

A total of HRK 77 million is earmarked in the NPOO for the digitisation of the agriculture sector - for digitising public services (HRK 14 million), for smart agriculture (HRK 50 million), and for launching the field-to-table project (HRK 13 million).

Vučković pointed out the ageing structure of family farms and that it is necessary to motivate young people to take over family farms. Digitisation can also compensate for the labour shortage in certain areas, she said.

"We will have the funds, and living in rural communities, with the help of investments in the local and entrepreneurial infrastructure, will be such that there will not be any gap between the quality of life in rural or urban communities," underscored Vučković.

The state-secretary in the ministry, Zdravko Tušek, said that digitisation will contribute to producing high-quality food at competitive prices, among other things.

Efficient agriculture and its competitiveness depend on digital solutions

The transformation and survival of rural communities depend on digital solutions, which already provide support and better efficiency, Danijel Koletić of the conference's organising committee said.

Smart villages are a new concept and it is necessary to educate and inform stakeholders so Croatia's agriculture can be more competitive in the future, he added.

Unfortunately, in Croatia there is not one university that offers a course in digital agriculture, he said.

It is necessary to educate all stakeholders in rural communities to start learning about digital farming because without that Croatia's agriculture cannot be competitive, Koletić added.

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