Summary of newsmakers from the previous day – 25.1.2006

Czech Republic fourth in environment tending

The Czech Republic is at the fourth place in the world in the global index of environment tending which was prepared for this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos. An international team prepared a table with 133 countries and the research was managed by experts from Yale univerzity in the USA. According to them, the first place was taken by New Zealand; than Sweden, Finland, the Czech Republic and the Great Britain follow. Slovakia is the 25th. Mali, Mauretania, Chad and Niger are in the end.

Farmers in Pardubice region do not like ice; cereals can mould

Farmers in Pardubice region worry about the current weather in which ice layer created on fields. Grown perennial cereals can for example mould due to a lack of air. If the ice crust lasts for one or two week longer, so it will be bad, said a director of the agricultural company ZEAS from Staré Hradiště Vladimír Řehounek. “We start being nervous about it. The worst situation is in case of barley and rye”, he said. The company sowed perennials at about a third from the total 2000 hectares of arable land. Wheat prevails, than barley and rye follows.

Even in frosts huntsmen are daily in forests, winter will raise their costs

Extreme frosts in recent days do not cause problem only to people but also wild animals in fores t are in danger. They are dependent on human help in such conditions. That’s why huntsmen take the trail for forests daily in twenty-degree frosts to bring animals feed. According to the huntsmen tough winter will show itself also in costs which will be higher than usually. Without a supplementary feeding the wild animals would hardly survive in frosts. Animals have problems to dig out feed because the land is cover with frozen snow.

CR is henceforth threatened with high fine from EU for excessive reserves

The Czech Republic is henceforth threatened with a fine from the European Commission in the amount of several million euros due to an alleged accumulation of reserves of goods before the accession in the EU. The Minister of Agriculture Jan Mládek said it after today’s negotiation with the commissioner Mariann Fisher-Böl. The commissioner threatened to governments of ten EU member states last year in the spring for a speculative reserves of key commodities with fines in the total height as many as 465 millions euro, from it almost 100 millions (roughly three milliards crowns) should fall to the Czech share. However, the aggrieved countries protested and the problems remain unsolved, excluding excessive reserves of sugar which, however, did not concerned the CR.

Source: Agris, 26.01.2006