site.btaAnimal Farmers and Greenhouse Growers Plan Protest March in Sofia on Thursday

Animal farmers and greenhouse growers will hold a protest march in Sofia on Thursday to press their demand for Agriculture and Food Minister Kiril Vatev's resignation. Dimitar Zorov, who heads the National Union of Cattle Breeders in Bulgaria, told a BTA-hosted news conference on Tuesday that the two subsectors are headed for collapse. "We want people to be able to eat Bulgarian fruit, vegetables and meat and to drink Bulgarian milk," Zorov said.

Boiko Sinapov, President of the United Bulgarian Stockbreeders Association, said: "The Agriculture Minister called us greedy. We are not greedy; we are working people. We ask GERB and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms to back our call for the minister to resign."

Velin Georgiev of the National Greenhouse Growers Association said that energy costs account for 90% of greenhouse growing expenses. This year, the situation is even worse because of discontinued energy supplies from Russia and difficulties in the natural gas sector in the United States, Georgiev said.

Women Farmers Institute Co-chair Penka Hristova urged GERB leader Boyko Borissov and National Assembly Agriculture Committee Chair Dessislava Taneva to establish a taskforce to address the situation.

According to speakers at the news conference, none of the demands raised by animal farmers and greenhouse growers a month ago has been fulfilled. They said production costs are becoming unaffordable even for the economically most stable farms. They warned of an imminent ruin of cattle-breeding. According to one estimate, annual revenues from raising a cow average BGN 5,000, while costs amount to BGN 10,000. Forty-eight cattle farms have gone out of business over the last 10 months, and milk production has dropped by 13,000 tonnes in four months.

The main problem for large farmers is to receive overdue compensation for damage inflicted by the war in Ukraine, Zorov said. Animal farmers and vegetable growers want the 2024 state budget to have BGN 462 million in such compensation.