A session of the Council for the Dairy Industry which began at 11 am on Wednesday, to discuss a model for defining the purchase price of milk, is still under way, Agriculture Minister Tihomir Jakovina said late in the afternoon, voicing hope that a solution would be found.
Speaking to the press during a break in the meeting, Jakovina said the solution must be the result of compromise and agreement.
Both dairy farmers and dairy companies have put forward their proposals, nobody is exclusive and I think agreement is possible, he said, adding that the models differed by a few cents.
The director of the Croatiastocar trade association, Branko Bobetic, reiterated that the new purchase price model proposed by the dairy companies was based on the average price in the six or seven European Union countries exporting the most to Croatia.
The dairy companies are being flexible and the last proposal is HRK 2.41 per kilogram, Bobetic said, urging farmers to agree on this proposal. He added that the average purchase price last year was HRK 2.53 per kilo.
Darko Pavicevic said on behalf of the HSUPM national federation of dairy farmers' associations that their positions and those of the dairy companies were very distant, adding that the problem was not in a few cents and that it was necessary to find solutions that would enable dairy farmers to survive the next six months.
He said this was not possible with the latest proposal and approach and that if the government needed 300 days to find those solutions, a moratorium would be agreed until then, but the question would be if by then Croatia would still have 14,000 dairy farmers or 3,000.
Minister Jakovina once again called on the disgruntled farmers to stop blocking roads, saying that nobody needed disorder and roadblocks, as nothing would be solved through pressure.
Any insistence on unreasonable demands is unacceptable, and the topic of today's Council meeting is a model for the purchase price of milk and not VAT, blue-dyed diesel or additional intervention measures by the government, said Jakovina.
In the eastern city of Osijek, the county association of cattle breeders distributed about 1,500 litres of milk in the city's main square today.
In the northern Adriatic Istria County, about 40 disgruntled dairy farmers took to the streets with about 20 tractors to point to the problems which have prompted dairy farmers around the country to protest for nine days now.
In Zagreb, because of the dairy farmers protesting in front of the Dukat dairy company, Slavonska avenue, one of the city's arterial roads, has been closed for traffic since 3.40 pm, police said.
