“There is a shortage of milk. Everything is getting more expensive, which hurts people with low incomes, says Ljupcho Bajdeski, a retired man who shops at Skopje’s largest farmer’s market in North Macedonia.
“If they bought two kilos before, they would only get one now. People are also buying less dairy products because the price of cheese went up by almost 30%,” he says.
The price of a litre of milk has gone up from about 57 denari ($0.92) to about 80 denari, which is hard for many seniors on pensions to pay.
In a country where the average wage is about 514 euros ($512), people will have a hard time buying milk that costs almost 1.50 euros per litre.
Zora Petreska, who has a small stand at the market where she sells dairy products, says things are the worst they have been in the 20 years she has been in business.
“This has never happened before. Very little is being used. I have a hard time getting dairy products. She says, “A lot of producers have quit and shut down their businesses.”
“The situation is pretty bad. The government isn’t doing anything, and we’re having a hard time. I really can’t see how this will end, but the way things are going, it will end at some point.
PRICES RISE, PRODUCTION FALLS
Erdzelija farm in Sveti Nikole, outside the capital city of Skopje, is one of many affected by the current rise in prices around the world. The International Monetary Fund says that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made the situation worse.
Just five years ago, the dairy made between 4 and 5 tonnes of milk every day. Now, it only makes 450 to 500 litres.
“Our farm made 900,000 litres of milk in 2017, but we only expect to make 180,000 litres this year,” says Aneta Jordanova, the manager and an agronomist.
She says that because of the drop in sales, the farm had to let go of up to 70% of its staff.
Nikola Petkovski, who owns and runs the farm, says that the lack of trained farmhands is especially bad for smaller farms like Erdzelija that are not modern or cutting-edge. The situation is made worse by the rising prices of fertiliser and fodder, which makes keeping cows harder and more expensive.
Even worse, companies buy 4% fat milk from dairy farms for 0.45 euros per litre, but a litre of pasteurised milk costs about 1.5 euros, which is one of the highest prices in the Balkans. Petkovski says that the low price of milk is putting dairy farmers on the edge of going bankrupt.
“If the milk companies keep giving us such low prices to buy milk while selling the same milk for four times as much, we won’t be able to keep up, and the number of cows will keep going down until the farm has to close.
“This is a problem for all farms in North Macedonia, not just ours,” says Petkovski.
The problem is made worse by problems with the quality of the feed.
Jordanova says that when Erdzelija was at its best, it got about 80% of the food for its cows from its own farms. On the farm, the food was of the highest quality, and each dairy cow could give up to 27 litres of milk a day.
