If Montenegro wants to take advantage of its natural and market advantages, and align its agrarian development strategy with European practice, it would have to resolve several fundamental issues with its agrarian policy:
implementation of European agrarian legislation harmonized with Montenegrin agrarian specificities; scientific and educational policy, that is, its firm incorporation into the current and developing life of the agrarian economy; export-import policy with emphasis on products that would be well received on the wider market; development of communal infrastructure; regional organization with respect for production and market specificities of each region; land policy as an essential issue of any well-founded long-term agrarian policy; development of complementary (supplementary) activities of the farm; the development of institutional infrastructure as a factor that should bear the burden of agrarian development in the long term; implementation of a unique information system that would have both a horizontal and a vertical database in the service of current production and market-economic development of agrarians; the development of the institutional infrastructure that can only carry the burden and operational function in achieving the goals of the agrarian policy and, finally, the system of budgeting current and development goals by the state.
It is not known that any country in the world has solved the listed problems on the wings of the liberal market and loans. The previous questions are the minimum framework by which the state should create an environment for the market competition of economic actors according to the criteria of the developed world.
- STATE
An economic (agrarian) structure that we had in the earlier (Yugoslav) economic system was demolished. Against this fact, a new structure that could intensify agricultural development on a market basis has not yet been built. Due to this fact, the Montenegrin agricultural economy is still in a kind of interregnum, with all the consequences of a market and economic nature.
The consequences of the current situation are reflected in the decline of arable land areas; reducing the number of livestock; further migration of young people from the countryside; market non-competitiveness and the number of farmers who persist in their devotion to the countryside and agriculture; disorganized farming and maintaining a difficult way of life and work in the countryside; the growth of a large number of unemployed (young) people in cities and many other negative effects that reflect on the social and economic stability of the country in the long term.
A serious redefinition of the current agrarian policy, in which the state would have to take key steps, is set as axiom number one, if it really wants to start dealing more intensively with the achievement of goals in agriculture in the long term. No matter how much the current agrarian government postpones the resolution of the apostrophized issues, Montenegro will fall behind the developed countries of Europe in agriculture!
Some countries from the Balkans became members of the European Union, but, unfortunately, the devastated rural economy remained almost where it was in the socialist system, and today it represents a cancerous wound in the economy of those countries! And not only that, these countries today represent ballast for the EU, which does not know what to do with them.
Europe's decades-long practice has long since demolished many taboos in the development of this economic branch and thus opened the way for unprecedented scientific and technological progress, not only in the field of the green revolution, but on that basis of the overall economic development of those countries!
- GOALS
When it comes to our goals, there is no doubt that they should correspond with European and world trends, while the misconception about the omnipotence of the liberal market, which can solve decades-long accumulated problems, and which today are devilishly burdening the socio-economic and political life of Montenegro, should be removed.
The policy in question does not imply the classic reliance of agrarians on the hump of taxpayers, as it has recently been wrongly pointed out in the daily press, but rather the redefinition of the current economic, fiscal and budget policy together and, on economic grounds, the inauguration of a model of financing agrarians that will be accepted by consensus by both the legislature and citizens! On the products of this or similar policies, Montenegro can never be a loser!
The thesis in question has been one of the starting points in the development policy of Western economies for several decades. The practice of those countries is not a secret, just as it is not a secret that we cannot overcome decades of lagging behind in this economic branch and credit jumps to join the society of agriculturally and economically developed countries.
In principle, the competitiveness of the agricultural economy must be based on three important characteristics of the domestic product: quality and brand aligned with European standards and market practice; price competitiveness, modern design, warehouse, packaging and transport.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the current practice constantly keeps the agrarian government in a kind of crucifixion, so that the observer has the impression that there is no chance for it to get out of such an unenviable state and take the place that naturally belongs to it in the modern agrarian policy of a country.
According to the author of this text, the previous question is primarily of a systemic nature, and only a matter of knowledge and institutional-financial nature, whereby everyone in such an economic system would do his job and be responsible for what belongs to him in the unique agrarian system, and whose success in that process is measured on the market and at the end of each business year!
- TWO DEVELOPMENT DIRECTIONS
The current concept of agricultural development in Montenegro is tailored from a monocentric "material" (farm), while this cannot be separated from the lack of a strategic concept of development, which should contain at least two development components:
(1) A farm as a rural enterprise with a main (production) activity and an additional occupation, derived as market values of a specialist type (rural tourism, woodworking, crafts, trade, catering, etc.) and organized according to well-established European criteria;
(2) Development of production on a regulated land territory (so-called larger complexes), as high commodity producers, diverse and price competitive on the European and world market.
Without a doubt, the farm should represent the backbone of the development of rural agriculture and the accompanying economic structure with all the disadvantages, such as the size of the land holding (average 3,5 ha) and many limiting factors that still make the rural economy difficult, as a result doubtful and uncompetitive.
In contrast to the restrictions that are now hindering the development of the farm, it should be borne in mind that today about 60% of the world food market is satisfied by large companies with land holdings and production on hundreds and thousands of hectares. Montenegro has both natural and market conditions to develop a broad production structure in selected directions, which could represent the wealth of Montenegrin agricultural offer on any market!
How important thinking on this topic is for life is shown by the data highlighted at the recent Assembly of olive growers "Boka", who are asking for conditions to be created in order to develop this especially attractive (export) production on a hundred hectares or more, similar to Spain (Andalusia), Italy, Greece and other Mediterranean countries.
- AXIOMS OF AGRARIAN POLICY
If Montenegro wants to create a minimal environment (framework) for the realization of the concept of development in agriculture in question, it would have to immediately ask science and the profession to offer a concept of agricultural development in the country on a long-term basis, which would be based on contemporary European and world practice. After that, the general public would have to become familiar with such an innovative development policy, so that after that the Parliament of Montenegro would adopt the basics of the new agrarian and development policy by consensus!
- AGRARIAN POLICY!
In the current conditions, it is impossible to have any project on this topic, let alone look for financial sources to support one of those projects?
And what can we say about the fact that there is no one to do a complex technical-economic project of farm development (main and secondary activities oriented towards the market), where the financing policy would have to be adapted to the specifics of the farm as an economic organism? Is the future of agriculture that we primarily deal with solving the problem of agricultural development on a piecemeal basis, or for some, cattle, for others, a tractor, for others, a greenhouse, etc.? In developed countries, these are moves to invest in bottlenecks, and the development of new and more extensive production on a market basis is a matter of complex projects designed by teams of interdisciplinary designers - experts in this field!!!
- SOME GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FINANCING AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION
Financing the development of the agricultural economy is as specific as the duration of biological and weather processes until the arrival of the final product. Countries that do not respect the nine specificities of agricultural production and compare the financing of this economic branch to those specificities, cannot count on the economic effect of investment investments. This axiom is one of the specificities that other economic branches do not have on the one hand, and on the other hand, these are the fundamental characteristics of a good agrarian policy, on which progress in this branch depends and its contribution to the economic and social stability of the country.
There are big differences between the financial policies that were applied in the agricultural production of developed economy countries more than 30-40 years ago and today's agrarian policies in those same countries. These differences were contributed by the thorny development path in the application of scientific and technological achievements in this area of the economy and large financial sacrifices by the states on this basis, whereby, as a result, today they have huge surpluses of products, forced to sometimes speed up the growth of the same production and prices, which is why in those countries we have occasional "wars" between producers (farmers) and the state!
Speaking in the language of facts, in those ancient years, European countries solved issues that represent the axioms of a well-founded agrarian policy, and only depending on the goals in that area looked for financial solutions that, in addition to scientific and technological knowledge, will represent the main support in achieving those goals. The reverse process is not possible!
Now, what's going on here? There are no solutions to the issues that form the basis of a good agrarian policy in the long term, and then we cannot even talk about a financial construction (policy) that would be put into the function of achieving agrarian goals! And as a result of all that - we have what we have!
According to the available knowledge, Montenegro has the ability to resolve both the first and second group of issues (of a conceptual nature), with the fact that the budgeting of agricultural production by: the state, European access funds and commercial banks (domestic and foreign), should not be below 5% of the state budget for one year (the Decision of the Parliament of Montenegro from 1992 stipulated that this goal be achieved in the year 2000)!
Finally, the EU, which donates non-reimbursable funds to countries on the path to joining the Union, the formation of payment agencies is a technical issue, through which the Union wants to establish control over the use of its funds. It is not in dispute that access funds are an important item in supporting the development of agriculture and rural economy, but the question is what to do with the problem of financing the agricultural economy on domestic and foreign sources of funds? Banks of commercial and general type have so far never been able to fully resolve this issue, which, frankly, the state has never heard of! That's why we always had a system - banks by road, and farmers by forest, and in such a system of banking-economic relations, the effects were mostly absent.
- CRUCIFIXION
Finally, as long as the apostrophized questions are on the waiting list (obscured in complex everyday life), the agrarian government will live in a crucifixion between the lack of a concept (strategy or the absence of its own agrarian system) for the development of agrarian production on the one hand, and, on the other, a practice that tends to blame the state for both its own and other people's failures.
Bonus video:
