Plowing or Fishing

Early in the morning, trucks and tractors full of peasants together with their cattle, set out for the village of Tomasevac, near Zrenjanin in Vojvodina. They turned off the main road aiming to reach the local fire station and a nicely adorned park where the republic exhibition of sheep and a regional exhibition of cattle were supposed to take place. Compartments for the cattle were already prepared, each of them had a poster pinned on it with the name of the breeder, the race and other data. Sunday morning, it could not be nicer than it was. 'It will be good today', says Nesa, a local cafe owner, who transferred his 'mobile bar' to a strategically good place, in the shade.

Minister Jovan Babovic did not turn up. Instead, he dispatched his envoy, who was announced by the speaker as Rodoljub Todorovic from the Republican Ministry of Agriculture. Then he asked him to open the exhibition officially. Mr. Todorovic did that and after a short speech in which he pointed to 'cattle breeding and milk production' as 'priorities of the Ministry which he represents'. At that moment, Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture of Vojvodina, Olga Curovic, spoke ending her speech with 'sufficient food = security of the country'.

Not far from the 'mobile bar', Josif Gojka from the village of Straza near Vrsac, was accommodating his sheep in one of the compartments. 'I am here with my sons', he said and pointed to two boys who were busy with the sheep. 'We cultivate 70 acres , we have 206 sheep, 20 pigs and five cows.'

'Is it worth?' He shook his head and uttered after a sip of beer. 'Only I milk the cows and produce cheese. Nobody else does that. I have to do it because of ready cash. 1kg of cheese costs about 60-70 dinars in the market. That is a secure profit.'

I asked him if he had heard about the preparation of the new Law on Agricultural Land, that they threat to appropriate land from those who do not cultivate it.

He said in wonder: 'How am I supposed to till the ground without petrol? I paid for it in Autumn, and they still have not given me anything. I was compelled to exchange German marks and purchase petrol on my own, I had to spend extra money, and only now I received what I was waiting for. Plus I had to pay some more than originally required'.

Neither Gojka, nor a group of other peasants who gathered there to listen to our dialogue, are particularly anxious regarding this new draft of law. 'Who can take away my own land?', commented one of them. He reminded the others how last year, in Crepaja, they chased away some inspectors when those tried to impose some taxes on the local peasants.

'Now they don't even ask us about the taxes', says Josif Gojka.

'They are silently waiting, and calculate the everyday interest of 0.02%.'

'Gojka, are we going to make a deal?', asked a man who just approached the table at which we were sitting. He is a representative of the 'Proleter' from Zrenjanin, the carpet industry. He offered the others a paper with prices. 1kg of wool costs between 18 and 20 dinars.

Nothing in return for cash, only compensation, carpets, working outfits, ropes, various pastes and detergents...

'Will there be any cash?', asked Josif Gojka, who seemed to be little interested in the entire story. 'We'll see, we'll figure out something', retorted the 'Proleter' representative.

'Here is the example', says Gojka. 'Only the maintenance of wool costs me 500 dinars, the value of ten pieces of sheep. And I have to do that twice a year. I told you, I have above 200 pieces of sheep, so you can calculate how much it is in the end. Last year 1kg of wool was 5 dinars, one sheep gives 4.5kg of wool, while a ram can give even up to 10kg. Let me not talk about the price of soil fertilizer as compared to the price of corn.'

The jury arrived. They know Gojka, and talked to him cordially, they estimated the quality of the flock and the ram separately. By the end of the day, it became clear that the beautiful ram had no equal. Josif Gojka took a winning cup back to Straza, along with a certificate, 20 litres of petrol and 800 dinars (35 DM) in cash.

'The quality of the flock is excellent', said Slobodan Savic, a veterinarian from Tomasevac, delightfully. '50% better than before, there is no cow which gives below 5-5.5 litres of milk. And what about the sheep? We are better than the agricultural fair of Novi Sad! And now you look at those cattle breeders, and know that one little of mineral water costs as much as three litres of milk. It is a shame for our community.'

Tomasevac is famous for cattle breeding. There are about two thousand of inhabitants and as many as cows. There are more sheep, almost four thousand.

It seems that the draft of the aforementioned Law on Land brought much more anxiety among those lawyers who disapprove of its profile, than it worried the peasants. I can notice that the peasants are apt to mock the attempt of the state to 'force' them to cultivate their own land, lest it be appropriated. 'If the state wished to settle accounts with us peasants, I believe that it would turn out that it owed us so much', said one of them. 'Here, I till my 12 acres of land and I also rented another 15 acres', he continued adding: 'I work for nothing! I have to invest, work, and I have no cash, not even for new tractor tires. There is no accumulation! And now, above all, that story about the new Law on Land. Someone gathers political points.'

'You know, it used to be a shame not to pay the taxes', continues Pujin. 'And today, I want to pay them, but I can't, I have no funds for that! The long-term policy is the most important, from the village to the entire economy', says Vasilije and adds that he has seven grandchildren. 'I would like to have a vision of future, but I have nothing to offer. And one wants either to work or to go fishing! So, the one who works, brings profit both to himself and to the society, but the state of affairs is not normal. Nor is it politically just.'

The dilemma is: to plow or to fish?

 
PUNISHMENT INSTEAD OF SUPPORT

At the session of the Serbian Parliament held on May 3rd, some changes and additions of the Law on Agricultural Land were adopted. By these changes it is, among other things, meant that 'each user of the cultivable land (be it of a public, local or a mixed enterprise) should pay between 10,000 and 50,000 dinars for each hectare of land which he does not use for plowing'. These changes also predict that, in case of disregarding these regulations, 'the Ministry can bestow the uncultivated land on other enterprises for the use within the next ten years'. Minister of Agriculture, Jovan Babovic, said on the same occasion that each year in Serbia a quarter of a million hectares of land remains uncultivated. He also mentioned those 'who possess cultivable land, but live in cities or abroad and they, by some estimation, own about 40% of cultivable land'.

The Coalition 'Vojvodina' asked for the Minister Babovic's resignation, and its representative in the Republican Parliament, Dragan Veselinov, stated that 'hundreds of thousands of hectares of land are not cultivated due to the bad politics of the Serbian Government' and asked 'why the state does not punish Smederevo steel factory which only business is to grow mushrooms, instead of attacking the farmers'.

'Poor is the country that has to force its citizens to work on its land', commented Ljubomir Madzar, member of the G17 group.

'The Government is again trying to increase agricultural production in a wrong way since, instead of supportive, it declares punitive measures', says the president of the Council of the Local Farmer's Unions of Vojvodina, Mr. Djordje Bugarin, whereas the Foundation for Democratic Development initiated the process of constitutional validation of the new rules before the Federal Constitutional Court.