Summary of newsmakers from the previous day 11. 5. 2005

Farmers prefer to use corn for fodder than for incineration

The idea of ČEZ company to incinerate the last year´s corn surpluses, which the government promised to buy, in power plants does not appeal to many farmers. Some argue it is not ethical, others that the purchase prices are low. A number of them finds a better solution in using the last year´s corn surpluses for cattle fodder. „If the state offered prices for the purchase for incineration, we might be thinking about it. However, we are not interested under such conditions,“ said Josef Krajíček, chairman of ZOD Zálabí Ovčáry. This company sells surpluses of last year´s harvest below the price or uses it as fodder.

Transformation of agricultural co-operative heading towards robbing half a population of the Czech Republic

In 1992 transformation act distributed the property of 1,200 individual agricultural co-operatives to altogether 1.25 million authorized persons. Thus, more than a half of households in the Czech Republic have their property share in transformation co-operatives. Ministers of agriculture, Lux, Fencl and Palas, however, in contradiction with the transformation act, led the transformation through a gradual robbing of persons. Consequently, an extensive agricultural property is now heading to the property of some hundred of persons, mostly public officials of the former communist regime. It is a strategic fight for permanent economic and political influence in our countryside.

Subsidies for bee keeping should grow this year

Subsidies for bee keeping should grow almost by 40 per cent to 110 million CZK this year. Apart from 80 million CZK aimed at the support of bee keeping, this year bee keepers should gain an opportunity to draw money reaching up to 30 million CZK from the programme for honey production improvement and its implementation at the market. It is going to be financed with approximately a half by the European Union, the rest by the state. The government will discuss conditions for subvention on Wednesday, reported the Ministry of Agriculture. The programme objective is to support for instance technical aid, fighting against diseases, analysis of honey samples or recovery of bee colonies.

Orchardmen called off this year´s harvest

Majority of fruit-farmers in the region has suffered from the worst disaster in the last twenty years caused by April night freeze. Most of apricots, cherries or pears as well as half of apples have frozen. Orchardmen have now begun to count the damages. They are estimated to have reached a couple of millions. „In two orchards the harvest is practically all gone, in others there is hardly a half of the crop left,“ says František Kratochvíl from the Agricultural Co-operative Liběšice by Litoměřice. The harvest of apricots will be close to nill in some orchards.