Grain crisis: is the government borrowing from Peter to pay Paul?

The government yesterday agreed to tackle the crisis on the agricultural market by increasing purchases of grain by 270,000 tones and rye by 30,000 tones through the Agricultural Market Agency. "It is less than the farmers asked for, but still the scale of the enterprise is impressive. So far we have signed agreements with different companies to subsidize the purchase of 3.5 million tones of grain. We have also decided to subsidize the storing of a further 3.5 million tones," said Agriculture Minister Jaroslaw Kalinowski. However the 300,000 tons is far below the 700,000 Kalinowski asked for and was only achieved by bringing forward grain purchases scheduled in the fall. This quota may still be too small to satisfy farmers. Wladyslaw Serafin, the leader of a farmers union has threatened that they will force the government to intervene and make further concessions if the long queues in front of the grain purchasing points do not disappear. "This government is famous for changing mind," he said. Andrzej Lepper, the leader of the Self-Defense party added, "farmer need to know what to produce and how much they will receive for it" (Prawo i Gospodarka, p. 3) K.S.