The country is falling, not due to drought, but due to politics: If Schmidt is arranging the fields, what are the BiH authorities for?

By: Amina Čorbo-Zećo

If it wasn't clear to you until now how institutionally devastated Bosnia and Herzegovina is, it is enough to read the open letter sent to the High Representative Christian Schmidt by farmers from the Federation of BiH. People who produce food, who preserve the land and try to survive in a country that systematically destroys its villages, are now begging a foreigner to bring order to a sector that forms the basis of every society in agriculture.

In a normal country, farmers would turn to their ministry. In a serious state, the government would know how important food is as a strategic resource. In BiH, farmers, those who feed us, are begging Christian Schmidt to save the agricultural sector!?

Not the Government, not the ministers, not the parliament, but a foreigner. A former German minister, who sits here because domestic politicians do not want to, do not know how to, or dare not do their job, and he doesn't mind playing with us either.

This open letter is not an appeal. This is the death certificate of BiH politics. Because when the peasant, a symbol of national strength and survival, gives up on domestic institutions and seeks salvation in the office of the High Representative, then we have lost not only the system, but also dignity. Then the state is a fiction, and the politicians are decoration.

How is it possible that in a country with billions of marks spent on budgets, institutions, offices, cars, daily allowances, and advisors, there is no unified agricultural policy? How is it possible that 30 years after the war, the peasant still pays the full price for fuel, without access to EU funds, and without any guarantee that his product will be bought or protected?

The answer is simple: domestic politicians feed themselves from the budget, not from the land.

They are fed by party obedience, ethnic mobilization, and shameless trading of national interests, while the peasant looks at the sky and fears hail, drought, and a market that does not exist. They are not interested in food, because they do not know how much a liter of milk costs, nor how much effort it takes for a meter of potatoes. They are interested in power, not land.

The problem is that farmers are writing to Schmidt. And an even bigger problem is that no one writes to their politicians anymore because we know they don't listen. Or even worse, that they don't care. In such an atmosphere, Schmidt has become the address of hope, and domestic institutions are addresses without mail. And if Schmidt is our hope, then it is better that hope does not exist! If you don't believe me, ask German farmers who plunged them into darkness? You don't have to wait long for an answer: it's precisely Christian Schmidt.

In 2017, as Minister of Agriculture, he cast the decisive vote, without coordination with the German Minister of Environment Barbara Hendricks, on the expansion of the use of the herbicide Glyphosate, even though the practice is that all ministers must agree. Glyphosate is suspected of causing cancer, after which farmers sued the pharmaceutical companies that used it.

So, now we come to the key question: if even the people who feed this country have given up on their politicians, does anyone have the moral right to talk about sovereignty? If you can't solve anything within your own house, whose house is it?

Let someone from the government explain to us what all these numerous governments, ministries, and agricultural councils are for, if the peasant is forced to beg a foreigner for protection?

What are all your laws and resolutions for, if you are unable to pass a unified law on blue diesel? What are empty slogans about the European path for, when you can't even write an application for EU funds...