Summary of newspapers of the previous day – 25. 3. 2009

More than 40 percents of water samples did not acquit norms

More than 40 percents of water samples, which inhabitants of Olomouc had tested for free within Monday open day in water-management facilities, did not acquit norms. A main cause was mainly an amount of nitrates in water which therefore can not be used as drinking, a spokeswoman of a company Moravská vodárenská (MOVO) Helena Koutná said to ČTK today. The Open Day took place in the occasion of Sunday World Water Day.

Milk quotas will not change in EU

Owing to falls of milk prices, EU member states refused to change in the European Union agreed rules which concern milk production quotas. The EU agreed after complicated debates last year in autumn that it will cancel the milk quotas in 2012. By the time they will be increased every year by one percents so that they would enable producers “a soft landing”. “I am on the side of European Union and I think that among the majority of member states there is no will to open rules which were agreed”, Czech minister Petr Gandalovič told. According to him, the change of rules would destabilize the entire sector for a long time.

FAO has new strategy for forests and forestry

The organization of UNO – Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has a new strategy for forests and forestry. It was approved by the 19th meeting of the FAO Committee for forestry (COFO 19) last week in Roma. The topic of the entire meeting was “Forests in changing world”. Mainly questions of sustainable forests management in the context of climate changes and the actual economic crisis and consequent questions of institutional changes in the forestry sector were discussed. Representatives of the Ministry of Agriculture of the CR spoke on behalf of the European Union at this important event. Concurrently with the COFO meeting also the World Forest Week took place.

Flax is past

An acreage of fields with fibre flax in the CR will probably again decrease, to as much as by half. While last year the crop plant was grew approximately on 300 hectares, this year farmers will sow on about 150 hectares. The reason of decrease in areas is mainly low buy-out prices and decreasing sale. Fibre flax will stay on on Czech fields probably only because of fall of prices of other agricultural crop-plants, mainly cereals. Perhaps, this is the last throb. We thought that this year anything at all will be grown, a director of Humpolec enterprise Čemolen Josef Urban told.