Summary of newsmakers of the previous day – 28.2.2007

Žatec hops and Pohořelice carp obtained protection from EU

In Žatec surroundings traditional slightly bitter hop with noble flavour is planted. Žatec hop has obtained a geographical trade mark , a protected mark of origin, from the EU. It will help it to be distinguished better on market and to fight with possible counterfeiters. The same trade mark was bestowed also to Pohořelice carp. Monday was the deadline for putting forward objections against the registration. By the time none has entered an objection.

Farmers expect other changes

A hit of this winter (not only) in the Ministry of Agriculture is most decidedly a concrete preparation of conditions for titles of the Rural Development Program 2007-2013 (RDP). Already last year the Association of Private Agriculture of the Czech Republic (ASZ ČR) supported especially maximal simplicity and also so that the program would be opened for private farmers as much as possible. However, regarding a politics of the Minister of Agriculture at that time, Jan Mládek, it, could be only a wishful thinking. Let's hope that together with “the big bear” also the long and infamous period of conservation of unsuitable parameters of industrialized Czech agriculture at all cost has left for forests. Now farmers in ASZ expect that after a long time the first right-wing Minister of Agriculture will change many-year tattle on rural development in deed as ODS declared before the elections.

Sugar beet will yield more non-grown

Over ten thousand crowns per hectare o agricultural land for end of growing of sugar beet, it is a maximal limit of compensations for farmers for this year. It relates from a proposal of government regulation on conditions of providing payments to sugar beet growers which will be negotiated today by the Cabinet of Mirek Topolánek. The mentioned sum is approximately double profit which farmers have from hectare of land in case of good harvest of wheat or oil rape. According to the Ministry of Agriculture it is dealt with a payment which is granted to growers for reduction of sugar beet prices in harmony with a reform of the sugar resort in the EU. It is received also by the farmers who have already ended with sugar beet growing and who can documented by contract with consumers that they grew it in the economic year 2005/2006.

Banks spoil farmers

Inland bank houses found out that Czech farmers are lucrative clients for them. Thank to growing subsidies they are not afraid of asking for credits. As bankers assetr, loans to farmers increased by tens percent last year. The biggest sum of “green credits” is registered by the Czechoslovakian Trade Bank (ČSOB) - three billion crowns. “Year-on-year it is dealt with forty-percent increase”, Kateřina Bednářová, a press agent reported. Therefore ČSOB is going to offer a new favoured credit to farmers. Nevertheless, it keeps details meanwhile.

Source: Agris, 01.03.2007