“The disaster of the century. And the government nothing.” The cold weather dealt a severe blow to the Czech Republic

When I was a child, it was said that potatoes were the food of poor people. In devastated post-war Germany, there was a great shortage of food, and an entire generation grew up on a potato soup called eintopf. Even we in Czechoslovakia at the time couldn’t jump out, and potatoes soon became our national food. However, it was not just any potato, because what the Potato Research Institute in Havlíčková Brod was able to breed was often the envy of the world. For example, Keřkovské rolls. But even industrial potatoes, that was the same thing. For example, the Krasava variety has survived and planted for a full 30 years, which is unprecedented in the world! One of the biggest breeders Ing. Josef Sixta worked in Keřkov for 40 years, bred 34 new potato varieties as an author, or in a team as a co-author, and is included in the world list of plant breeders at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome. His potatoes were planted in France, the Netherlands, Italy and what was then Yugoslavia!

The once top Czech potato industry is slowly and surely going to the bottom…

They were bet mainly here, long and long before Sixta. Shortly after Bílá hora (1620) and planted areas exceeded 100 thousand hectares. At the beginning of the transformation of our country’s economy in 1989, we harvested potatoes from an area of ​​115 thousand hectares. Since then, however, their acreage has decreased year after year, consumption per inhabitant has increased slightly, and imports have been growing and breaking records. Records in distance, in primitive growing technologies under the condescending eye of the departmental minister, but finally also of non-governmental organizations that should sound the alarm. In the end, they hit, but against us, when we found ourselves with tractors in Prague one morning. That’s an aside, but to the point. The once top Czech potato industry is slowly and surely going to the bottom. So much so that the leading European oncologist, Professor Žaloudík, recently noticed it here in the Parliamentary Papers, among other broader national economic contexts. He was particularly excited by the imports of potatoes from Africa, precisely from Egypt – “which I really wouldn’t have expected as a gift from the desert to the Highlands”, he writes here in Parliamentary Papers on April 25 in his article, which aroused an extraordinary response. I, a person from Vysočina, a farmer, must thank the professor, but at the same time ask myself the question – what next, how to change it, how to stop the decline and start the rise?

In order to use common sense, the product of which, the article, I will guarantee to the readers of the Parliamentary Papers, every fortnight, always on Tuesdays, so in today’s, the first, I will state the principles by which we will be guided and demand from those responsible:

· We respect agriculture as a primary sector dependent on natural influences, not on ideology (currently KDU-ČSL).

· A resort can be successfully managed by someone who has basic expertise and has undergone some practice to understand the complex linkages of the agrarian system.

· The same requirement also applies to heads of non-governmental organizations, so that they can adequately defend the interests of their members.

Minister of Agriculture and slogan about the disaster of the century…

And what is the reality? Let’s go to the biggest disaster, or tragedy, that befell fruit growers. Something happened that none of us had ever experienced before – frosts for many nights in blossoming orchards, in awakened nature.

Minister of Agriculture Excellent is a visibly bad minister. Now he’s been taught the catchphrase about the disaster of the century, so he’s talking to the media. But his first words for the fruit growers were about 70-80 million crowns in aid. Another, according to the estimate of Czech growers, a total disaster in the volume of 100 thousand tons of destroyed fruit worth over 1 billion crowns in cultivation costs, so the minister is already talking about 100 million crowns. Growers would draw on the crisis resolution fund, which has been notified (approved) since 2016. It is a standard tool that countries that are serious about agriculture routinely use to save the industry after such natural disasters. Another tool to deal with a natural disaster are operating loans from the PGRLF (Supporting Agricultural and Forestry Guarantee Fund) for small farms and small growers. Two-thirds of fruit growers are family farms, and guess what the minister is offering from this fund apart from nice words for the media? It’s simple – NOTHING! This is a practical example of what the government means by supporting small farms. Well, and finally, there is the third problem, employment in companies that prepare fruit for the retail network, popularly speaking, business chains. In fact, there will be no work in empty warehouses, sorting rooms and packing houses, and if the employees leave, it will be difficult for them to come back and these businesses will end.

Ten million fruit trees have disappeared over the past ten years

Holt agriculture and its beautiful field of fruit growing is really dependent on such influences as climatic conditions. If we have such a government of non-artists, with the trust of citizens not even 20%, and a certain one hundred and eight votes in the Chamber of Deputies, then we are in for a further increase in prices, imports and the direction of the country’s food security to the bottom. And beware, if someone gets angry and dares to strongly demand a different approach from the minister and the government, they will simply be labeled as “certain pro-Kremlin forces” and painted. But that only buys problems. Judge with me, let the numbers do the talking. Since 2014, when the Russian Federation stopped buying fruit from EU countries, but especially from Poland, the largest producer, which thus lost a vital market, it had to find a new one. And we were and still are the first to hand, and prices for producers fell below cost in Central Europe. The result – retail drives down prices, increases imports, and our growers continue to reduce orchard areas. Specifically, since the turning point of 2014, the area of ​​orchards has decreased from 17,500 ha (of which three main species: apples 9,000 ha, plum trees 2,100 ha, sour cherries 1,600 ha) to today’s 10,500 ha (apples 5,200 ha, plum trees 1,800 ha) , cherry trees 1,100 ha). 10 million fruit trees disappeared from our landscape in those 10 years, and when a natural disaster was added to that and 100,000 tons of Czech fruit were destroyed, as I already mentioned, I call on you, Mr. Prime Minister Fialo and Minister Výborný, to say a clear word! Signals, I’m afraid, won’t be enough. Neighboring countries have already started.

And I ask: Potatoes from Africa or from the Highlands? And what about the fruit, where did it come from?

Jan Veleba

ex-president of the Agrarian Chamber of the Czech Republic and member of the Club 2019

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