Someone recently remarked that life is a miracle. This is not a platitude or claim of the celebrated film director Emir Kusturica, but reality. However, despite all the appreciation of its uniqueness, beauty and countless challenges, experience shows that people are the greatest miracle. No matter how much hope, optimism and reason they hold the line, they are often unrecognizable. They look you in the eye and deceive you. They are able to tell in broad daylight that it is night. Or how there was no drought in Serbia this summer. That farmers invented it to get certain financial support, i.e. subsidies. If that drought had happened 50 or 100 years ago, there would have been a lot of people who would have believed in such a scenario, that is, a deception.
Unfortunately, when we thought that this year, after the three-month drought, the “outbursts” of climate change had finally ended, we were wrong. A little over a week ago, a good part of Central and Eastern Europe was hit by a big storm, wind and rain, a real deluge.
Floods hit Austria, Romania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, as well as parts of Germany and Hungary, where thousands of citizens were evacuated, while according to incomplete data, around 20 people died.
Our 45th parallel was spared from this type of storm, with the expectation that all water waves will pass through the Danube safely and without consequences. Experts say that everything is under control and that there is no risk of its spillage.
THERE WAS NO DROUGHT???
The next few paragraphs in this column could apply for the column “believe it or not” or for a new one called “unseen miracle”. Namely, when representatives of the United Farmers’ Association of Serbia, whose members are mainly farmers from Vojvodina, knocked on the doors of several local governments to seek help from the consequences of the long-term drought, they were literally shocked.
As Miroslav Matković, president of the Subotica Agricultural Producers Association, told the media, the local bureaucrats convinced them that this year there was NO DROUGHT, but a LACK OF RAINFALL, which, according to them, is considered an average season.
Thinking that one of those officials was joking, they began persuasion, which ended unsuccessfully, but with advice to the farmers that the local community could not help them in such circumstances, but that they should seek some of the measures to get out of the crisis from the Government of Serbia.
Such behavior is not only a deception but also a disparagement of farmers. Whether the “turning off” of the drought was their “creation” or whether it came as a broader plan, the paori did not manage to find out. This burlesque of explanations, they say, only confirms that farmers have reached the lowest branches.
When they need every dinar for new sowing and, by the way, to pay off all kinds of credit debts, certain “heady gentlemen” assure them that they can’t get anything for the damage from the catastrophic drought, because apparently there was none?
What else is there in such a brazen “play” of words except that: God forgive them! In addition to this, we can also add the latest tip published by one of the professors of the Faculty of Economics from Belgrade, in which it is stated that the damage caused by this year’s drought in the agricultural sector is over 130 billion dinars.
DEAD PROTEST
In addition to the membership of the Initiative to save domestic agriculture, the paori from other associations have been sharpened for a long time. They addressed the Government of Serbia in writing with a request to urgently pay them 17,000 dinars of subsidies for certified seeds per hectare within 30 days. In addition to this, they added the request that as of January 1 of the following year, excise taxes on fuel should be abolished for farmers.
In case these demands are ignored or rejected, they announced that they will be forced to limit the protests again. This kind of behavior is not the result of any whim or irresponsibility, but, as they explained, what burned their nails. Quite simply, if in the next month they do not receive the money that was promised to them last year, they will not be able to organize autumn sowing and other necessary works.
As Miroslav Matković emphasized on several occasions, this year’s catastrophic drought, which some local communities claim never existed, drove the nail into their penury.
CHEESE AS A BANK GUARANTEE
After several industrial revolutions, agricultural products, that is, food, lost their primacy on stock exchanges and larger markets. Fortunately, certain institutions recognize this type of goods as extremely important, even promising, which is significant both from a financial and motivational point of view for most food producers.
For our public, i.e. the majority of it, it is unusual information that a regional Italian bank started accepting an unusual pledge for granting loans to small agricultural companies and entrepreneurs since 1953. They did not come to the bank in the north of Italy with gold bars and real estate deeds, but with large rings of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.
As the bank explained to the local media, this business move did not have a marketing character, but that they determined that high-quality and sought-after cheese deposited in special bank vaults gains quality and price over time.
Parmesan is normally a hard, grainy cheese made from cow’s milk with an accentuated strong taste. It is aged for 12 months, and sometimes up to 36. It has the status of a protected geographical indication of Italy and the European Union, the market value of one reel of 36 kilograms ranges from 900 to 1,500 dollars.
Italian bankers smelled a good guarantee for a credit pledge, unlike others, including ours, who are uninterested in such products and thoughts. The key lever for granting loans to them is the “favorable” interest rate. And nothing more!
DISCOURSE ON LITHIUM
In the famous Valjevska high school, as the public informed TV N1, the teacher of that school for the subject of oratory and rhetoric came up with the idea of asking the students to express their affirmative opinion about lithium mining in writing in their notebooks. That affirmative was most likely the trigger for a number of students to resent and inform their parents about everything.
As it usually happens, most of the reactions came down to the fact that school is not the place for political topics and discussions, that it is an indisputable form of abuse of students in daily political discussions and the like. Along the way, it was requested to determine the degree of responsibility of the subject professor…
The skill of oratory and rhetoric in later education and work is very important for, for example, lawyers and new educators. This is a bad idea and attempt, only in that the professor asked for an affirmative speech.
Any other one, no matter what it was, would be welcome, because even so, we are sorry, we stumble and behave mediocrely at every serious social obstacle, commenting on it and expressing critical views. Even if it was lithium mining.
Or, how our farmers “INVENTED” this year’s drought!!!
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Source: www.agromedia.rs
