Kosovo expected to get less wheat this year

While wheat is a major culture that long holds the largest surface of agricultural land, it has never been achieved to meet the needs of the population with this culture, considering its importance to flour production.

Kosovo Government officials stress that during this year there is expected to be lower grain production, due to climate conditions that have dominated last autumn.

The climate conditions, they say, have influenced them to plant with this agricultural culture only 50,000 hectares of land.

Isuf Cikaqi, director of the Department for Agricultural Policy in the Ministry of Agriculture, says less production is expected, but the average wheat productivity for this year is expected to be in the normal Souz that in Kosovo is between 3,500 and 4,500kg per hectares, depending on the parcels and the region.

This year, “is planted (the autumn plant) less area in relation to last year and other years. The amount of grain sown is also late planted. A total of the information we've received from the ground, 50,000 hectares have been planted, which in the report in the next few years are 20 thousand hectares less”, Cikaqi says of Radio Free Europe.

Last year 74 thousand hectares of land have been cultivated in wheat culture.

According to official data, in Kosovo the need for this per capita product is 205kg, which is that 410m tonnes of wheat must be spent in Kosovo.

Agriculture experts also claim that planned wheat productivity will not be achieved in Kosovo this year. Professor at the Faculty of Agriculture at Pristina University, Imer Rusinovac, tells Radio Free Europe that not 50 percent of the planned areas were cultivated with wheat because of the atmosphere conditions that have prevailed in October and November last year.

So, according to him, Kosovo will, in the future, depend on the import of wheat from other countries.

In addition to climate conditions, the other reason for reducing wheat surfaces, Rusinovac cites farmers' discouragement by competent authorities who have not found adequate methods to promote them for strategic products.

I think agriculture should have a completely different treatment and common denominator between institutions, farmers and the relevant ministry should be shared so that with advisory services the more technological transfers to farmers”.

The subx0> provided in general the agricultural surfaces that Kosovo has, is estimated to be the last in terms of per capita agricultural production. Even agricultural productivity is low, and this has resulted in low productivity and reckless import”, he says.

Russia even says that the small amount of wheat production this year and the implementation of the 100 per cent tax on products from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina will also affect the increase in wheat prices, respectively.

Until the tax was introduced, the largest amount of wheat in the Kosovo market has been introduced from Serbia, in many cases at lower prices than local production.

When this is added to the tax implemented by the Government of Kosovo, then the price of wheat, respectively, at the end of crops could be markedly higher. Because any other amount that needs to be imported, if bought by other countries in the region, such as Croatia, Hungary, costs will be evidently more expensive for the fact of transport”, Rusinovac said.

Otherwise, to increase the farmers' interest in planting larger wheat fields, the Ministry of Agriculture has been building farmers for several years, up from 150 euros a year, while the minimum grain - planted surface must be 2 hectares owned by the farmer.

The overall area in Kosovo is over 10,908 square km, while 53 per cent of the land is agricultural. Meanwhile, of 1.9 million people, 61 percent of them live in rural areas.