“The risk of spring frosts is a known risk at the 50th parallel. The entrepreneur undertakes it consciously and voluntarily, it is only his responsibility, not ours,” wrote Kalousek. “Capitalizing gains and socializing losses is a mix I don’t like,” he added.
Most of the fruit trees in Bohemia are damaged, the frost destroyed almost 100 percent of the harvest. The damage in Moravia is about 50 percent, and due to the weather, the situation there may get even worse.
Kalousek wrote on the X social network that he sincerely felt sorry for the fruit growers. But he expressed doubts about whether the company should participate in their loss. In another post, he joked. “I have just returned from a tour of my pineapple plantations in the valley of the Lužnice river. Everything froze.. I do not despair, because Minister Marek Vyborný will certainly help me with your money. Most important of all is food self-sufficiency. And I’ll give you pineapple self-sufficiency for your money!”
This year’s frosts, which, according to fruit growers’ estimates, caused damage to the crop worth more than a billion crowns, threaten the existence of roughly 500 fruit growers in the Czech Republic. Martin Ludvík, the chairman of the Fruit Union of the Czech Republic, announced this today. According to him, these are businesses that are dedicated exclusively to fruit production. They are also all family farms. Ludvík added that there are currently 700 to 800 professional fruit growers in the Czech Republic.
Excellent said on Thursday that his resort will launch a program with the help of 70 to 100 million crowns for fruit growers. He will specify the exact amount. “Our main concern is that the program should be able to compensate the growers especially for the costs that they have to spend in that set without having sales. It is not possible to close the orchard and open it again in the spring.” Ludvík said today. According to him, the program can compensate growers for up to 80 percent of damages.
According to Ludvík, the Fruit Union is also discussing other possibilities of assistance with Výborný. These include supporting operating loans for small growers and maintaining employment in businesses that focus on storing, sorting and packing fruit for retail chains.
“In addition to direct assistance through the risk program, we will also look for ways of operating support and loans,” said Excellent. In addition to ensuring the care of the orchards, fruit growers need money to keep employees, even if they will not have revenue from fruit sales this year.
According to Ludvík, it is therefore essential to ensure that businesses, including small ones, last until next year, with the help of possible operational loans. “It is certainly not our ambition that all damages be compensated,” Ludvík added.
The crisis program for extraordinary events in agriculture was prepared in 2016 by the then Minister of Agriculture, Marian Jurečka (KDU-ČSL). He already helped farmers in 2016, 2017 and 2019. According to Výborný, it has been notified, so now there will be no need for a complex administrative start-up.
According to Ludvík, this is one of the biggest damages to the domestic harvest in the last hundred years. The damage is so fundamental also due to the fact that in the previous weeks the weather was above average and the plants were significantly ahead of the usual situation in terms of flowering and fruit growth. Roughly 100,000 tons of fruit were destroyed.
