Less than a week ago, the government approved the plan to create the National Food Group. The intention is to protect farmers from unfair treatment by networks and price fixing that forces them to sell their crops at a reduced price.
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Piotr Zgorzelski is a guest of the Morning Talk of Gazeta.pl
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National Food Group. Higher prices for farmers, lower for consumers?
Agriculture Minister Henryk Kowalczyk, quoted by the Newseria agency, announces that the process will be finalized at the turn of May and June. In his opinion, the new food holding is to be, on the one hand, a good partner for farmers, which will strengthen their protection against unfair practices on the part of large contractors.
Hopes in new one there are more organizations. The government is even counting on the Group to provide lower prices to consumers and even be responsible for strategic food stocks. In the opinion of Minister Kowalczyk, KGS may be the beginning of something even more serious. – There may be a lot of these tasks, and maybe even in the future it will be some kind of commercial network, who knows – said the minister. – These are also elements that could prevent a farmer from being helpless in the face of large concerns – he adds.
Bread will be 10 zlotys? Agriculture Minister: Certainly it will not be cheaper
How the Group is to help with the understatement cen? The head of the Ministry of Agriculture gives specific examples. – When processing plants take advantage of the situation with, for example, ASF and the fact that the farmer from the zone cannot sell his pig, although these are completely healthy pigs. Processing plants offer prices completely below the value, even there have been times below 2 zlotys per kilogram of live – says the minister. – Similarly, in the case of soft fruit, when farmers harvest fruit that they are not able to withstand even a dozen or so hours, so then processing plants propose prices that are sometimes absolutely unworthy of this value – he adds.
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“The problem of Polish agriculture is processing in foreign hands”
The group is also to counteract the practices of importing products that can be purchased from Polish growers. – Recently, I have also had hops producers who complain about price collusion, that processors do not buy hops from them, even though they need a lot of it, they only import it from Germany, instead of buying it from Polish farmers. So there are many examples of these, explains Minister Kowalczyk.
It also talks about further plans. – We should also myle about some processing, processing into strategic stocks, for strategic storage, after all, now we are concerned about whether we have enough grain for half a year or for a longer period of time, due to war in Ukraine. The holding could be an entity that buys grains for strategic stocks, summarizes the head of the Ministry of Agriculture.
The government, adopting the project of establishing the Group, stated that the problem of Polish agriculture is that the vast majority of processing – apart from dairy farming – is not in Polish hands. “Hence, inter alia, troubles, fluctuations and price collusion. The proposed prices are below the dignity of a farmer’s work. I hope that KGS will break these collusions so that farmers receive decent wages” – we read in the government document.
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