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Terrorists or tractor drivers - why did farmers pull heavy equipment against the government?

The protest is not only of grain producers and is becoming more and more large-scale, which comes to show that it is high time for a radical change in Bulgarian agriculture. People of my generation and older people with nostalgia remember some good times when Bulgaria exported fruits and vegetables. In every major city there was a factory or factory for the production of canned food, butchers' workshops. At the moment, the mistake is not from the last government and this minister. This is a systemic mistake that has been superimposed over time and it is high time to correct this mistake and make a restart, "said the former director of the State Fund Agriculture Nikolay Kavardzhikliev in "ON AIR Day".

The question is who will make this restart? "There must be a full consensus for him from all parties in parliament if we want to have something to eat in a few years, as well as between the respective representations of producers, processors and absolutely the entire community of farmers. In order to have such a consensus, we need to take up this debate as quickly as possible," Kavardzhikliev said.

In his words, the second thing that needs to be done is to change the law in order to establish the representativeness of all agricultural associations and organizations, which are hundreds in number. "As a director of the Agriculture Fund, I remember that I had a lot of meetings and I wondered where to start them and where to end them. They themselves do not tolerate each other. If we do not have a clear state policy and clear priorities on which to agree, there can be no development for the agricultural business. The pie is one, it is clear how much subsidies are received from the EU, what percentage of the budget goes to agriculture. How will they be distributed and for whom, there should be a consensus," the former director asked Bulgaria ON AIR.

Protesting farmers vowed: 'They don't know what storm is coming from the wind they sowed'

Kavardzhikliev explained that this is the situation at the moment because of poor communication. "The problem is not that the money goes to one place, but that there is concentration in several people. The other problem is whether this is what we all want, whether we really do not want to have viticulture, fruit growing, we do not want to have vegetable production, because these branches have been wiped out in recent years. At the moment we are bringing potatoes from Germany, nectarines from I do not know where, this was previously produced in our country and why it disappeared - because of lack of labor," he said.

According to Kavardzikliev, the country must have a clear priority and will, and then there must be control. "The role of the Ministry is to manage processes. No one runs anything. The chaos in agriculture is complete and is not from yesterday or today, but from the last 20-30 years. It works piecemeal, the same people with the same methods are trying to get a different result," he said.

Asked if there were "terrorists" in the agricultural sector, he said: "There is a total confusion in communication. The word "terrorists" has no place when it comes to business. We're talking about real business. The way of communication should be strictly professional and clear, especially in such a position," he added.

In Kavardzikliev's words, it is clear that we do not protect our state interests. "First of all, it's the national interesting, where is it? We need to have a clear vision of what it is, what is the state policy. We are not protecting state interests," he said.

"The question is what is in this grain (Ukrainian editor's note), the problem comes from the control of management there are no management systems and control why they are afraid of a fine, we have sanctions at the moment for not having a monitoring system. It had to work from January 1 after several postponements, it does not work, "Kavardzhikliev said.

DF Agriculture

business

Terrorists

Nikolay Kavardzhikliev