Montenegrin agriculture today faces deep and long-term problems that can no longer be explained by bad years, climate, or individual policies.
It is essentially about systemic neglect of the agricultural sector, primarily through minimal agro-budget and its wrong structure, but also through the country's broader development model that favors consumption and imports, while neglecting production.
Small agribudget - a clear signal of priorities
The share of the agricultural budget in the total state budget of Montenegro has been around or below 1%! This is a strong and unequivocal indicator that agriculture, despite all the declarations, is essentially is not a strategic priority of the state.
However, the problem is not only in the amount of funds, but in their purpose and distribution.
Of the nominal agricultural budget, a significant portion goes to:
- administration and operating costs,
- regulatory and control bodies,
- social measures that are not development-oriented,
- various transfer and consulting items.
When all of that is excluded, the funds that actually reach producers and that should influence production growth, processing, and market competitiveness become insufficient to change the situation on the ground.
Subsidies without effect: maintaining stagnation
The existing subsidy system generally does not function as a development instrument. Support is often:
- scattered over a large number of measures,
- poorly correlated with market performance,
- insufficiently conditioned by productivity, quality and standards.
Such an approach does not encourage investment, does not strengthen the processing sector and does not connect producers to the market, but only alleviates problems in the short term, while the structural situation is deteriorating. The consequences are visible: a reduction in livestock, a decline in domestic food production, the closure of farms and the rapid abandonment - depopulation of villages.
Agriculture in the shadow of debt and imports
Additional pressure comes from the broader economic framework. The growth of public debt, the consumption structure of GDP and the record foreign trade deficit create constant pressure on the budget. In such conditions, agriculture is often seen as an expense to be limited, rather than as one of the few sectors that can reduce imports in the long term and increase the country's economic resilience.
The result of such a policy is paradoxical: the state is increasingly indebted, food imports are increasing, and domestic production is increasingly being shut down.
Strategies without budgetary and political support
In the past decades, Montenegro did not lack agricultural development strategies, but rather lacked concrete decisions and budget coverage.
Strategies have often tried to encompass “all sectors”, without a clear selection of those productions in which our country has real comparative advantages and market opportunities. In this way, without clear priorities, even such small support funds are wasted, and the effects remain almost invisible.
I believe that if one truly wants to change the current situation, three things are necessary:
1. The agricultural budget must urgently grow by 3 to 5% in the coming years, but it must also grow in quality.
It is crucial to increase the share of funds going directly into production, processing and market competitiveness, with strict separation of development and administrative costs.
2. Subsidies should be tied to performance, market and quality
Support must reward productivity, standards, contracted sales and processing, not just land area or the existence of the farm.
3. Strategically link agriculture with tourism and domestic consumption
Without contracted domestic food for tourism and public institutions, there is no stable market, and without a market, there is no sustainable production.
I am convinced that without these three changes, Montenegrin agriculture will continue to remain on the margins of the budget and development. With these changes, our agriculture can become a development resource, not a permanent problem.
Autor je direktor “Ekoplanta”
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