STIPAN BILIC has labelled himself the 'only paid agriculture lobbyist in Croatia'"Our farmers are total Communists." "Politicians hand out subsidies to farmers like they were presents for kids." "The country is one big farming cooperative that is ruralizing the entire system." These are just some of more vocal statements coming from Stipan Bilic, the director of the Croatian Employers' Association's Food Industry & Agriculture Association. Bilic openly admitted a few years ago that he was the "only paid agriculture lobbyist in Croatia," leaving his opponents without one irrational argument they might use to compromise him. He has for years not minced words in his public analysis of Croatian agriculture, unburdened by the need to pander to Croatian farmers, or to the ruling political elite, stating that everyone, including the representatives of the food industry, should have the right to articulate their positions in public.

This, Bilic points out, relates in particular to the current problems faced by Croatian farmers, where on one side there are the emotionally charged demands of the farmers, and on the other politicians who usually look first to not losing the favour of their voters. And while last week's blockade by farmers of the border crossings in eastern Croatia foundered, Bilic warns that Croatia still does not have a clear agricultural policy, and has given his take on the farmers' protests in this interview for Nacional.

NACIONAL: How would you comment last week's failed farmers' protests? Although the farmers point out that their blockade was hindered by a police ban, it does appear that the rest of the Croatian public has not shown any significant sympathy for their demands.

- The farmers had no reason to protest and that is, among other things, why the protest failed. Most Croatians obviously concluded that the farmers had vague and contradictory demands, and that their self-proclaimed leaders were emotional political hacks. In the past, and this has continued to this day, every attempt to professionalize farmer's associations has failed, as a result of which they have never been more than a political lever. And every time they have demands, they are highly emotionally charged ones, something they count on. We all have roots in a village somewhere, and have sentimental feelings towards a grandmother, or a dog, cat or village rooster, and when someone starts calling for farmer's to protest, everyone irrationally begins thinking about the tough life in the village. But these are not arguments with which to debate agricultural policy. Besides, you have no clear collocutors, nobody with which to, for example, compare the prices of agricultural products in Europe and Croatia. There are, for example, 670 farmer's associations in Croatia, a good many of which are no more than the extended arm of some political party. Likewise, as they are so divided, they clearly cannot have a united position and demands, which always weakens them at the bargaining table. They grasped this problem at the European Union's institutions a few years ago, and we were asked in Brussels to set up a joint association that could represent Croatian farmers in Europe. The attempt foundered famously, as on the one hand a number of associations gathered with the desire to work jointly, while a dozen "loudmouths" rejected the idea and demanded a meeting with Minister Cobankovic. Guess with whom the Minister sat down in the end.

NACIONAL: OK, at the latest protest rallies they clearly demanded a higher price for wheat and threatened to block the international border crossings.

- I don't get what they are complaining about, because if they want the price to be pegged at 1.25 kuna, they already have that. If farmers sell wheat at 0.80 kuna, they get a further 3,250 kuna subsidy per hectare of sown wheat. If the farmer produces five tonnes, that's 0.45 kuna from the subsidy. So Croatian farmers already have a buy-up price of 1.25 kuna. That is why it is not in fact clear what and how much they actually want. One of the problems in the agricultural policy emerged when Bozidar Pankretic was the minister and he introduced subsidies. This created the false impression that subsidies were the farmer's right to get some money. Subsidies are a farmer's income, to maintain production at a lower market price. That is how it works in all of Europe. Here in Croatia politicians interpret subsidies as some kind of gift they hand out to farmers, and it turns out that subsidies are a way to engender corruption among farmers. In Europe a tonne of wheat costs from 105 to 108 euro. The farmer, of course, gets less, from 80 to 90 euro. The subsidy this year is 250 euro per hectare. If you add up the price of wheat and the subsidies in Europe, it turns out that European farmers get less than Croatian farmers do. If Croatian farmers decide to protest, and get more than their counterparts in the European Union, the most subsidised farmers in the world, they really have nothing to complain about. Protests like that make no sense. And secondly, protests at border crossings make even less sense. We export wheat to Bosnia, where then is the logic of blocking these border crossings? Had somebody moved to block a river port, where wheat is imported into Croatia - well that might have made some sense. This way it is quite pointless. Besides, how is it possible for farmers to advocate cheaper bread, and at the same time ZELJKO MAVROVIC Radical farmers are accusing the president of the Croatian Farmers' Federation of having made a pact with politiciansdemand higher buy-up prices for wheat?

NACIONAL: Besides there not being any more money in the national budget to cover the demands of farmers, you actually feel that a higher price of wheat would actually be detrimental to both agriculture and farmers?

- Yes a higher price of wheat is counter-productive for farmers. If cereal crops are expensive, then it does not pay to feed cattle. In agriculture there is parity, and the price of corn is usually about 90 percent of the price of wheat. If wheat stands at 1.25 kuna, then corn is priced at 1.10 kuna. Let's say you need 10 kilograms of corn to gain a kilogram of growth in swine. What you get is a pig that costs 10 or 11 kuna live weight. But nowadays in Europe you can get pork, with no head, entrails or hair included, for nine kuna. Then it does not pay to feed swine. We have seen this absurdity too, with high prices set for primary products through subsidies, and farmers having no incentive to feed cattle - so that we wind up importing processed dairy products and meat, especially labour intensive products like fruits. We imported 450 million kuna worth of fruits and vegetables last year. And nobody cares to ask why this is so. The value of this import is greater than the combined value of the wheat and corn harvests. But producing cereal crops requires the least amount of work. Everybody now knows that you need 16 to 18 hours of work a year to sow and harvest a hectare of cereal crop, while you could have upwards of three thousand hours of labour a year on a hectare of orchard. Of course, everyone will opt to do what requires the least work, especially if various policies are geared towards making that the option of choice.

NACIONAL: Let's say that Croatian farmers have the right to be unhappy, because European farmers also blocked downtown Brussels a month ago.

- Here are the concrete figures. Subsidies in Croatia amount to 300 euro, in Europe to 260. This summer European farmers went to protest in Brussels. And nobody would meet with them. They came to Brussels, held their protest, and nobody would see them from the agricultural directorate. I assume it is clear that they will never come to protest at the seat of the European Union again. And here in Croatia when some farmer's association raises a ruckus the minister runs to the nearest fire-fighter's hall, sits down with them and engages in a shouting match, and they get the impression that they can exert pressure. When that happens nobody is leading an agricultural policy, we are just listening to farmer's leaders. In Croatia companies hold 12 percent of the agricultural land. On this land they produce 52 percent of the total agricultural production. When one adds up the value of all the products, we buy 63 percent from companies, and 37 percent from farmers. On 87 percent of the area farmers produce 48 percent of the total production, 37 percent of which are agricultural products. They are, therefore, a smaller group of producers. You have never heard someone leading an agricultural policy by subsidising the companies that produce more. We have inadequate production, but do not give incentives to those that produce more. And so the year before last, of the 2 billion 500 million kuna of all subsidies, companies received 608 million, and farmers a billion eight hundred million. Those that delivered 63 percent of the goods got only 20 percent of the subsidies, and those who delivered 30 percent got 80 percent of the subsidies. That leads us to a total loss, because a farmer gets a kuna of subsidies on every kuna of goods sold. Imagine if the director of Podravaka was to bring his employees to Zagreb to have them demand that the entire production of Vegeta be purchased at a price they set. How do you think politicians and the public would react to that? But when farmers do something similar, then everybody throws a fit. And what is the difference between Vegeta and wheat?

NACIONAL: What then is the solution for Croatian agriculture?

- Agriculture has to adapt, modern technologies have to be utilised. Most of the tractors owned by farmers are too large, useful only on large tracts. In Switzerland they produce 8.5 billion euro worth of goods on a million hectares of agricultural land. We produce a billion. Their land is more difficult to work than ours, with mountains and depressions. We lack an educated work force. Only 16,000 people in Croatian agriculture have some kind of secondary school, college or university education. It does not make sense to plant grape vines on Slavonian fields, or to sow wheat in Istria or the Ravni kotari region. There needs to be investment into agriculture, reorganisation, but this development should be financed by banks, not the state, because the state does not stimulate increased production and the consolidation FAILED PROTESTS Stipan Bilic feels that it was pointless to organise protests on the border to Bosnia, where Croatian farmers export their wheatof agricultural land, and instead for purely political reasons placates one social group.

NACIONAL: Who should give farmers counsel and guidelines? One farmer was quoted in the press a few days ago as saying that he had planted watermelons on his land instead of wheat and had increased his earnings five-fold that way. Why are Croatian peasants not planting more watermelons, and less wheat?

- There is more work involved in producing fruits and vegetables. The average farmer in Europe sells about 150,000 euro worth of goods a year. Our farmer sells no more than 20,000 euro worth. He is uneducated, does not employ the latest technologies and scientific achievements. They concluded long ago in Europe that the average farm needs to be about 80 hectares in size for the average farmer to be competitive. American farms average at about 208 hectares. In Croatia crop farming sees 16 to 18 hours invested per hectare each year, while a farmer in Europe works 68 hours a week with another 45 hours a week that his wife helps him out. Those are the German statistics. And here the entire agricultural policy boils down to government not running afoul of farmers. In Europe there is a single agricultural policy.

NACIONAL: Although the blockades were a failure, farmers are now saying that they have not backed down from their demands. What will happen now?

- Nothing will happen. The farmers will visit the Prime Minister, who just a few months ago made farmers some ill-considered promises. Then she will explain to them that the country is in the midst of a crisis, and they will be overjoyed because they came to St. Mark's Square and walked on those costly carpets. They will have a grand sense of their own importance, and it will all wind up with nothing.