September the 9th, 2024 – Croatian price hikes have been the main topic for very many months now, but are they set to get even higher?
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, the drought and extremely high temperatures that prevailed from mid-July onwards caused enormous damage to very many Croatian farmers. Rough estimates say that yields will be 50 percent lower than initially expected, as reported by N1.
Crops sown in the spring suffered the most, and this primarily refers to corn, sunflower, sugar beet and soybeans. The damage suffered by farmers, especially in Eastern Slavonia, will inevitably be felt by livestock farmers due to the halving of grain yields intended for livestock production, primarily corn.
“From July the 20th to September the 1st, the ground literally became scorched, we had almost no rain for six weeks, and temperatures skyrocketed. The plants simply can’t stand it. We can console ourselves, but the harvest will be 40 to 50 percent smaller than it should be. Unfortunately, this is the reality,” stated Damir Jagić, a pig breeder.
further croatian price hikes may come as a result
Damir was then asked about whether or not the economic consequences of these devastating climate issues will be primarily felt by the pockets of customers in the form of yet more Croatian price hikes.
“How else can farmers cope without increasing the prices of their products?” he answered with a self-explanatory counter-question.
“When the price of animal feed rises, when the government threatens to increase the price of energy and when the prices of everything go up, do you think the price of meat will go down? As much as energy prices go up, production will become more expensive for me and other producers. Unfortunately, this will fall on the backs of the buyer, whose purchasing power isn’t great anyway,” he added.
The government, he believes, shouldn’t have touched energy prices at the current moment.
croatian price hikes for meat in 2025? possibly…
Jagić also predicted that the price of meat will rise after the new year.
“For the next two or three months, while there are still stocks, I don’t expect prices to really rise, but at the beginning of next year, they will for sure. Then, everything that happened this summer will need to be accounted for,” he added.
More serious livestock farmers, according to his estimations, have some of their own grain production, so the problems will not affect them as much as those who will have to buy grain on the market, where the prices for that will be higher.
“Agriculture should be closely linked with livestock, but we’ll just export most of the grains, now that their price is the lowest, and then we’ll need to import them later,” he pointed out.
“the damage is at least 50 percent, everywhere”
The harvest, he says, was also bad in Croatia’s neighbouring countries and those in the wider region such as Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine, and so on.
“Damage to agricultural products is at least 50 percent everywhere. I don’t know who can make up for that. The buyout will begin and the lobbies dealing with the buyout will hold a miserable price. We’ll then export these products, mostly corn, to Italy, where the Croatian market gravitates, and of course Croatian herdsmen will not be able to get grain at a normal price. We’ll be in trouble at the beginning of next year. We’re going to run out of supplies, we’ll have to buy it all on the market, and you know that when something is not available, the price just goes up,” he explained.
Jagić also believes that the state should buy grain for commodity reserves.
“That’s how it works in normal countries. If there are major disturbances on the market, the state intervenes by releasing goods from its reserves. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that here because it obviously doesn’t suit some people,” he concluded for N1.
