December the 19th, 2023 – Despite the naysayers and bleak headlines, Croatian agricultural growth is actually up there with the best in the EU since 2015.
As Mladen Miletic/Poslovni Dnevnik writes, in response to certain rather misleading media articles, the Croatian Ministry of Agriculture recently presented some interesting data related to the share of agriculture in the total gross domestic product (GDP).
In addition to that, it also showcased the data on production trends across Croatia in the context of comparison with other EU nations which place increasing importance on agriculture. At the level of the EU average, agriculture accounts for 1.4% of the bloc’s GDP, and 31% of the total funds of the EU budget are provided for its development.
Size isn’t an indicator
According to data on the nominal growth of production, Croatia ranks 16th, and with an index of 118.20, it almost completely fits into the EU27 average (118.98). According to the table of real growth, it ranks 18th and behind Croatia sit Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Greece, Spain, and Cyprus.
“After 2016, we note a recovery and continuous growth in the value of Croatian agricultural production. Furthermore, when one takes into account the fact that until Croatia joined the EU in 2013, different methodology was used to calculate the value of production in which subsidies were included.
Today, only subsidies that can be directly linked to the unit of production (which make up only a small percentage of all subsidies) are included in the value of production,” the Ministry of Agriculture stated.
“If we focus solely on indicators of real values, it can be seen that in 2022, compared to 2015, Croatian agriculture achieved the third largest increase in the entire EU with an index of 131.32. According to this indicator, only Poland and Ireland had a greater increase than Croatia did, and that growth continued in 2022, where the real rate compared to 2021 was 9.23%, and the nominal rate stood at 18.2%,” the ministry revealed.
The Agriculture Ministry also added that size is not in itself an indicator of competitiveness, for which Italy is the best example.
Growth in the share of young people working in Croatian agriculture
“One of the priorities of current Croatian agricultural policy is to increase the overall value of agricultural production, among other things, by redirecting it to more profitable sectors”, the Ministry of Agriculture pointed out, before highlighting the data on the share of young farmers in the Republic of Croatia.
According to the latest data, young farmers make up a share of 14.4%, which represents growth of 66% compared to 2015. At the same time, Croatian farmers are becoming more and more educated, the sector is getting younger, and Croatian agricultural production has been recording a continuous increase in value.
