How would you react, i.e. how do you react, dear readers, when you hear that the tourist workers at the Adriatic or some other coastline want to make enough money for a whole year in two or three month tops? We know, we know, we can read your lips. The question was purely rhetorical. And how would you react if someone wants to make that kind of money in two or three weeks?
And that is exactly the case. Imagine where – in Serbia! A short “retroactive” look on the printed press has shown that in (again) this year’s disputes over raspberries you can almost exclusively hear the Association of the manufacturers Willamette.
They are dissatisfied, they set the conditions, and they threaten to come in tractors in front of the government building in Belgrade. Actually, in the time of you reading this text they may have already been there because the protest, in case their terms aren’t met, is set for August 2nd, the day Novi magazin goes into print.
And that Willamette is just the dark vilayet in which the perspective of the Serbian raspberry bossiness has gotten lost. That is that “bad, old type that has been overcome and whose harvest lasts for three weeks, and is sold on the international market in a crushed state, like “offal”, or “grits”, and mostly goes into the making of jams and similar products”. This is how Zoran Misic, the owner of the company Atle, a firm that yearly makes and exports to the EU and American markets three tons of so-called consumer raspberry, explains the state on the domestic raspberry market for Novi magazin.
Djordje Stevanovic , a raspberry grower from Pozega, also agrees with. „Our main mistake is that our crops consist of only one sort of raspberry, and it is “willamette”, some 90 percent, and all the other sorts make up just 10 percent. The “willamette” sorts season only in a couple of weeks of Jun and July.
This fact points out that we haven’t done anything to prolong the harvest season, to have the harvest before June and after July. There are sorts that season even two times a year, like “polka”, “ polana” , “heritage” and others, says Stevanovic.
„Our growers boast that they are working just like their grandfathers did some 50 years ago, and that actually means that as growers they are dead”, adds Misic, almost with an anger in his voice. In fact, if not like their grandfathers, the majority of the growers work just like their fathers did. Ivana Dulic Markovic, former minister of agriculture, who is now an agrarian consultant says for Novi magazin that the rise of the Serbian raspberry production started during the 70’s in the last century. But now due to the natural conditions – but because of the innovation and the knowledge which were applied then, almost a half a century ago.
„An agronomist from Arilje, our famous writer Dobrilo Nenadic“, states our interlocutor, “based on his knowledge of biology and the sorts of raspberries created a breeding form and the technology of breeding – the binding of individual offsprings to the wire and placing the annual offsprings in the crops until May or June. The American sort “Willamette” reacted in a great way to those innovations and became a Serbian brand.
Dr Sveta Petrovic, who was the director of the Arilje cooperative at the time and who saw the value of the inovation, contributed to its further success. But, the exceptional spirit of entrepreneurship of the citizens of Arilje and its surroundings was the main thing that contributed to its success, and then the construction of the private refrigerator trucks and the competition on the purchase level…To conclude, the success of the Serbian raspberry is the result of the innovations and the spirit of entrepreneurship which were adjusted to the market, and not the result of the climate, tradition and magic”, states Dulic Markovic.
(You can read the entire text in our printed edition)