“Voles destroyed about forty percent of our wheat crop, similar to barley and other crops,” a farmer from Litoměřice told Práva. According to him, the situation is much worse than last year. “We normally harvest around 7.5 tons of wheat per hectare, this year it was only four tons,” he said. According to him, a ton of wheat is sold for about four thousand crowns. He grows wheat on 100 hectares of land, so this year’s loss due to the rampage of voles will reach almost 1.5 million crowns.
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Representatives of the Agricultural Union of the Czech Republic and the Agrarian Chamber of the Czech Republic are therefore now negotiating with the Ministry of Agriculture on the possibility of further use of rodent venom, they want to grant an exemption for the application of Stutox II. Decisions on the exemption are expected by the end of August.
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Last year, according to the chairman of the Agricultural Union of the Czech Republic, Martin Pýcha, voles caused damage worth two billion CZK, this year it will be at least hundreds of millions of crowns. The poison could be used by scattering on land where there will be more than 1000 burrows per hectare.
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Harm threshold three times higher
However, a farmer from northern Bohemia claims that the price of Stutox is so high that it is not worth buying.
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According to Pride, farmers have not received any money to compensate for the damage, nor is there any such promise yet. According to the latest survey of the Central Inspection and Testing Institute of Agriculture (ÚKZÚZ), the threshold of vole harmfulness was exceeded 3.5 times in July; compared to June, the frequency of populations increased.
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In July, ÚKZÚZ announced that fears that other animals, such as owls or hares, would die of the venom against voles were not confirmed. He stated this at the time, referring to data from state veterinarians and ornithologists. Poisoning by the remains of the poison, ie zinc phosphide, was demonstrated in one buzzard and one pheasant. Last year, environmental organizations protested against the application of poison to the soil surface.
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Last summer, the institute allowed the poisoning of poison on the surface of the land in a large part of the republic. However, after a wave of criticism from conservationists and the Ministry of the Environment, the Ministry of Agriculture suspended the validity of the permit. Later, after widespread application of the poison, almost 80 dead hares and several pheasants were found in Moravia, in which tests showed residues of the poison.
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