Tobacco farmers threatened they would block the Macedonian-Greek border crossing Medzitlija Wednesday. They have been blocking the regional roads Prilep-Gradsko, Prilep-Bitola, Prilep-Bitola-Ohrid-Demir Hisar and Prilep-Krusevo for a few hours for the past 5-6 days, Dnevnik reports and have been boycotting the tobacco buyout in protest against, as they say, the offending price of merely 120 denars per kg.

Representatives of the tobacco farmers came to a meeting in the Ministry of Agriculture Tuesday afternoon. In the meantime, their anger escalated. Stevan Stojanovski took his tobacco yield to a buyout point but returned it home shortly afterwards.

“They assessed its quality at 130 denars per kg. I am not selling at that price. My family toils for a whole year so that they can buy it such a low price. Moreover, our tobacco may go musty and not be worth even 60 denars. We demand that the government protect us,” Stojanovski says and suggests correction of the samples for purchase and categorization of the yield for evaluation in two instead of 11 classes.

The buyout firms are said to have received no instructions to relax their evaluation lines. They say they try to reach an average of 170 denars per kg for the tobacco of higher quality.

Kire Nedelkoski from the committee of unsatisfied tobacco farmers that demand that the average buyout price be not below 192 denars per kg explains that the tobacco farmers intend to block the Medzitlija border crossing today.

“I don’t know if I will be able to control the built-up anger. The purchasers make fun of us with evaluations of 120-130 denars per kg. The tension rises also because of the passive attitude of the government toward the purchase firms. We are not giving up and are going to protest even more every day,” Nedelkoski said.

The Government is still in direct talks with the purchasers and the tobacco farmers in order to help overcome the problem with the tobacco buyout, said Agriculture Minister Ljupco Dimovski.

“We are now in direct talks with the purchasers to whom we wish to explain that they should have greater understanding when classifying the tobacco and that they should be making more objective evaluation,” Minister Dimovski said.

The purchase points have to work and tobacco has to be sold, Dimovski explains, adding that there is also a deadline set by law by which tobacco can be purchased.

“The Ministry of Agriculture extended generous support to the tobacco farmers to solve the buyout-related problem,” Dimovski said, locating the problem with the extremely strict evaluation of the tobacco quality. The prices are defined with the agreement signed between the tobacco farmers and the purchasers in April last year. Dimovski says the evaluation of the tobacco is most rigorous which puts at risk the average buyout price.