For seven decades, Montenegro has not had a consistent and fruitful agrarian policy, appropriate to the natural, market and socio-economic needs of the country. It would have to correspond firmly with the postulates of modern agrarian policy, as applied for decades by the countries of Western Europe, adapted to our specificities.
Biotechnical engineer and retired agricultural economist Čedomir Marović, former director of the Agroeconomic Institute, deputy minister of agriculture and forestry and director of Agrobanka in Podgorica, told "Vijesta".
"Countries that insufficiently use their natural and market advantages cannot count on the economic and social stability of the country in the long term. Due to the underdeveloped economic structure in the countryside, the maltenes suffer, all the segments that make up the mosaic of the economic and social being of a country. Hence the catchphrases that should warn public office holders of the seriousness of the problem, such as: "Earth is God's gift". Man was born to live in symbiosis with the earth and nature, and he is obliged to preserve and improve this unique gift and, as such, pass it on to the next generation. It seems that this great truth is not known in our country," Marović said.
Agriculture and tourism have always figured as development priorities. The gap between proclaimed policy and importance is visible to the naked eye. What are the reasons for this situation?
For seven decades, Montenegro has not had an appropriate agrarian policy that would correspond to the huge opportunities in the development of the state, that is, its economy, on the one hand, and on the other hand, with the practice and experiences of the developed countries of Europe, of which Montenegro is a member. heavier. All our accomplishments and setbacks in the three-decade period begin and end from there.
The issue of the lack of land policy as a fundamental value for any successful agrarian development is constantly highlighted. How much did this fact affect production and economic progress during the transition?
The "duality" of ownership, created after the return of 7.000 hectares of land used for production to the previous owners, opened a new, more complex dimension of the development of farm production in relation to the centuries-old small traditional economic structure in the countryside.
At the beginning of the last decade of the last century, the state was obliged to approach solving the complex problems of agricultural production in the countryside based on the principles of good agrarian policy. This did not happen, so after almost three decades of transitional processes, Montenegro is unsuccessfully trying to develop this sector of the economy based on the principles of neoliberal economics.
It must not be forgotten that the state in the socialist system, with its economic policy, instead of encouraging development, destroyed life and economy in the countryside. With the disappearance of social property, the state skillfully covered up the economic and economic void, which spread like a 'silent fire' in the countryside for years, with the threat of engulfing the social and economic being of Montenegro at one point. To make the trouble complete, at the beginning and during the first decade of the last century, social property experienced ruin. 7.000 hectares of land were returned to the previous owners, in which Montenegro invested money from its poor for years, in order to turn the purchased land (shrubs and estates) into productive land. From a balance point of view, with the Law from 1992, the state lost at least the value of three or four plantation complexes in Ćemovsko polje today. This production does not include the loss of the superstructure - farm production in animal husbandry, the dairy industry, long-term plantations and other products, which the returned land dragged into the abyss.
And it is not the act of returning the land to its former owners that is in dispute, but that the land has been left to all kinds of devastation. Even today, that land is overgrown with bushes and weeds and is in the same condition as it was in the XNUMXs.
"The agrarian authority claimed that the problems in question will be regulated by private initiative and the 'all-powerful' hand of the market!? However, as is known, nothing came of such a claim.
The problems culminated at the moment when the Department of Agriculture launched the thesis that agriculture and the countryside do not need the 'godfather' of the state, because there is private initiative and the market, which, along with commodity competitiveness, represents the formula on which the future agricultural policy will be based.
As a consequence of this policy, the number of livestock, and thus the products of livestock origin, and some other agricultural branches were halved, whereby the balance of self-sufficiency of the state in food products fell to 30 to 35 percent compared to some 70 percent that Cna Gora had before the end of 1989. . years. These are unofficial estimates from 2015, because there are no official records and data.
When it comes to productivity, for example, milk production in cattle breeding, as the most important agricultural branch, in one year in 2015 was 2.720 liters of milk per cow in our country, in the region 3.500 - 4.000 liters, while in the countries of the Western economy, milk production is around 6.000 - 7.000 liters of milk per cow per year.
Is it right to base the development of agriculture and villages in Montenegro only through small rural farms?
The current concept of agricultural and rural development, which rests on rural farms, is defective in many ways. This does not mean that the orientation towards the development of farm production is wrong, however, the preconditions for successful commodity production have not been created. A small private property can hardly respond to market needs in the foreseeable future. I am very sorry that in almost three decades of the transition process, no one raised the issue of activating the largest Montenegrin production potential in the populated area of Zeta with 5.000 hectares and reclamation of 12.500 hectares in the coastal zone of Lake Skadar. In the earlier economic system, extensive research and conceptual projects for the activation of these two zones were carried out, however, the time of the dissolution of Yugoslavia came, and with it the oblivion of many values, including the production activation of the largest Montenegrin plain of 20.000 hectares, including the plantations in Ćemovsko polje. .
If the current concept of agrarian policy is inconsistent with the development and social economic needs of Montenegro, what should be done to establish a more productive agrarian system?
The current agrarian policy in Cna Gora is centralized, in contrast to the need for decentralization with the existence of a strong scientific and professional institutional infrastructure, which would develop both current production and new investment and market capacities on a market-economic basis. The current centralized agrarian policy has no currency in countries with developed economies.
Thus, the production of health-safe food has been around 0,13 percent of the total annual agricultural production for a long time. No one knows how long conventional production, or production with chemistry, will prevail. The allocation of incentive funds by the state has always hovered around one percent of the state's budget spending for the year, while in the countries of the region that percentage is at the level of three to four percent. Not to mention Europe. The market function, as a vital issue of every successful production in the countryside, has not been adequately addressed in the past years, whereby low productivity, unfair competition, and the non-competitiveness of domestic production have often led our food producers to despair. Associations of agricultural producers failed to fulfill their function, and today they act as 'holy water' - they neither help nor retaliate.
How to proceed in order to untie the current knot, when it comes to production and economic results and the complete division of profession and science on this vital issue of the economic development of Montenegro?
Montenegro must finally face its reality in the field of agricultural and rural development, no matter how harsh it may be.
By opening a dialogue and searching for possible solutions in this area, it would mark the beginning of overcoming the professional-scientific divisions and the great lagging behind the situation at the regional and European level. The agrarian authorities should consider the need to form a National Council for the Development of Agriculture and Rural Development, or a management team as an expert-scientific interdisciplinary body, under the Government or relevant ministry, which would analyze the current situation in agriculture and the countryside, and based on its findings, propose further a procedure that would lead to the development and adoption of the concept of a new strategy for the green development of Montenegro, based on ecological and market principles.
If the understanding prevailed about the necessity of separating the now centralized functions of agrarian policy, whereby the agrarian authorities would take care of creating an optimal environment for the development of the economic branch in question, and leave the operationalization of current and development policies to professional and scientific institutions, then we could say that instead of one step forward, two steps back, we can only talk about two steps forward. The creation of a fruitful and long-term agrarian policy in a country cannot replace occasional legal and sub-legal interventions.
In addition to seven factories, 40 million liters of water are imported annually
Cultivable land areas in the countryside fell in 2015 to only 6.000 hectares, or three percent of the total agricultural areas in Montenegro. As a result, Montenegro imports between 450 and 500 million euros worth of food every year, says Marović.
"Farm production is permanently under economic pressure, either due to its technological and market backwardness or unfair competition, which in general means that farmers, uncompetitive on fragmented holdings, barely make ends meet or fail with their internal economy.
As a result of the decades-long situation in that area, we could recently read that we have a situation where, in addition to seven water factories, Montenegro imports 40 million liters of water per year.
Finally, the village has lost its young population to an extremely worrying extent, while there are no sociological studies that follow the changes in the Montenegrin rural area, so today the planners of village development are faced with the problem of how to project economically sustainable and safe food production in the countryside, integrally with providing services in the field of rural tourism, wood processing, cultivation and collection of forest fruits and medicinal plants.
For almost 70 years, the agricultural sector of the country has been kept at the subsistence level
Marović claims that the plan as an economic category in the current economic system lost its function a long time ago, and with the disappearance of the plan, many vital links of the economic function in production and services, which are unknown to economic theory and world practice, were lost.
"From this kind of practice, today we have a situation where for almost 70 years the country's agricultural sector has been kept at the subsistence level, without a green development strategy, (and we had one), while investment interventions in agriculture and in the countryside have no visible reflection in their own production. and the economy.
There is no data on how many farms economically failed during the transition period, let alone the time before the transition.
How then to claim responsibility?
Here we should respect and welcome the production of wine, spirits and fruit, partly meat processors and vegetable producers".
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