„Sugar crisis“ in Serbia?

 Agricultural producers in Serbia have sowed around 30,000 hectares with sugar beet this year, which is half of the amount of last year’s crops, thus, depending on the yield, sugar will barely cover domestic needs, but not the export as well, an expert in agriculture Milan Prostran has stated today.

He has told Beta agency that Serbia has a quota on sugar export to the EU of 180,000 tons, and more than a year ago it was requested that this quota is increased to 220,000 tons, since this over 100,000 hectares are under sugar beet.

Prostran has said that maximum annual sugar production in Serbia was 700,000 tons, which is well above domestic needs of around 200,000 tons.

He has added that circumstances on the European market have changed, since it was liberalized in 2015 and import of sugar from sugarcane, which production is cheaper, was granted.

„Sugar production from sugar beet is in major crisis, since production of that foodstuff from sugarcane is cheaper, among other things because sugarcane is a perennial plant,“ Prostran has said.

As he has said, the conditions for sugar beet sowing were rough this year, due to a March drought, when this, formerly dubbed „queen of the field“, had to be sown, in order to avoid a serious infestation called sugar beet weevil, caused by low temperatures.

„Production of sugar beet is in a major crisis and it is not excluded that sowing of this plant will be decreased significantly, thus there will be not enough raw material for work of the last four to five sugar plants in Serbia“, Prostran has said.

Once, according to him, every republic of the former SFRY except for Montenegro had a sugar plant, even Slovenia. There were 15 of such plants and they were built using money from a special fund, financed from the sale of sugar, thus the problem of insufficient raw material was solved with sugar beet import, over which sugar plants were fighting.

Izvor: Beta

Foto: Pixabay