Recent conflicts over milk prices and production incentives for dairy farmers are just one aspect of the current crisis affecting Croatian villages and livestock farmers.

Production of meat and milk, the number of cattle, the number of family farms and the number of people employed in agriculture, in the last decade is falling alarmingly with a growing dependence on imports, says the group Zivo Selo.

The group say that policies over the past decade is causing an average of 15 family farms per day to stop producing and delivering milk,  on an average of 15 family farms per day, opening up serious economic, social and environmental wounds in Croatian villages.

But this is only part of the problem say Zivo Selo. In the last 20 years Croatia has imported 9.5 billion US dollars worth of food more than it has exported, and the group says that Croatia can and needs to feed itself.

The group proposes to that a organisation is urgently formed that would gather industry professionals, representatives of players in the market, and the government with a mandate to examine and agree on the point of view of the nature of the crisis and to form an agreed action plan for its solution in a public-private partnership program.

croatiantimes