Marina Galović, president of the Vegetable Growers' Association of the City of Zagreb and Zagreb County, warns that domestic family farms are on the brink of survival due to low purchase prices, imports, and a lack of state protection.
Croatian small-scale vegetable producers are facing existential challenges that threaten the survival of family farms. Marina Galović, owner of a family farm in Zagreb's Struge neighborhood and president of the Vegetable Growers' Association of the City of Zagreb and Zagreb County, revealed the scale of the pressure they deal with daily in an interview with N1.
The association, which brings together around forty family farms from the wider Zagreb area, was founded with the aim of sharing information, but Galović stresses that joining forces alone is not a solution without systemic change.
"Business cooperation among family farms is impossible until Croatia passes a law protecting agricultural production and forces foreign retail chains to stock domestic products. Until the government takes that step, we gain nothing from joining forces," Galović said.
One of the key issues, she says, lies in the fact that the hospitality and tourism sector has no interest in domestic products because they are more expensive than imported ones. Mass production in countries like Italy allows for significantly lower prices, making Croatian producers uncompetitive.
"They find us too expensive because our production is smaller and prices are higher. That's why they all go to Italy to buy ingredients, which they then sell as Croatian products. There, production is mass-scale, so prices are lower. For example, in Italy, a kilogram of zucchini costs 30 cents, while here it's 80 cents to one euro. Our restaurateur gets three kilograms there for the price of one kilogram of our zucchini. They look to cut costs to lower meal prices, but in the end, they don't lower anything-they just boost their own profits," Galović claims.
Galović emphasizes that the problem is not a lack of goods or capacity for cooperation, but rather the refusal of retail chains to buy domestic products at fair prices.
"It's not about joining forces. I could unite a thousand farms today. We'd have a massive amount of produce, but what would we do with it when retail chains don't want to take it? They offer 35 cents per kilogram for peppers and 20 cents per kilogram for zucchini, and they blackmail us because that's below our production costs. Abroad, prices are like that because of mass production, but that doesn't work here," she explains.
She also points out that Croatia has enormous untapped potential. Currently, only two percent of arable land is used for vegetable farming, yet it already covers 50 percent of production. However, producers have no incentive to expand because they can't even sell their current volumes on the market.
Recent stories about cherry tomatoes costing 10 euros per kilogram at market stalls have sparked debate over retail price differences. Galović clarifies that market stall prices cannot be compared to those in retail chains due to drastically different volumes and operating costs.
While a single retail chain sells a thousand crates of tomatoes a day, a market stall sells just one. Additionally, the monthly rental cost for a market stall is 500 euros, and with daily costs for an umbrella and scale, it climbs to 1,000 euros per month.
"On top of that, you need to cover your salary, contributions, and production costs. If I sold tomatoes for one euro instead of three, I wouldn't earn enough to buy bread. It's normal for retail prices to be higher. And retail chains have been putting wholesale prices on retail shelves for ten years now, destroying our production. At the Green Market, carrots from family farms cost one euro per kilogram, while retail chains keep the price at 60 cents. My production cost for carrots is 70 cents, and I can't sell them below that," Galović explains.
An additional blow to domestic production comes from increasingly extreme weather conditions. Due to drought, producers working under organic standards lose up to 60 percent of their harvest because they cannot adequately protect vegetables from pests.
"All of us family farms in vegetable production in Croatia work according to the Green Agenda and European organic standards. But because of that, we have up to 60 percent waste in these extreme weather conditions because we simply can't protect vegetables from all pests. And while we stick to green agendas, vegetables from third countries treated with various pesticides are landing on retail shelves at the same time. All that matters is the profit from imports, so VAT drips into the state coffers, and we're left out in the cold," concluded the president of the Vegetable Growers' Association of the City of Zagreb and Zagreb County.
