“Last year, merchants claimed that they had to raise prices because farmers were raising them. Now farmers are dropping prices sharply, and it’s the turn of merchants to start making food cheaper on the shelves,” says Minister of Agriculture Zdeněk Nekula (KDU-ČSL). According to him, however, the chains do not rush into discounting, at least not as much as they could. How deep should prices fall? And should the Czech Republic import cheap grain from Ukraine?
You can watch the entire interview in the introductory video or listen to it in your favorite podcast app. What were its main themes?
0:33 – 6:00 Why would Minister Zdeněk Nekula be calm in the case of the Czechs in the issues surrounding Ukrainian wheat, in which pesticides appeared? How is its testing going and how much wheat does the Czech Republic import from Ukraine?
6:00 – 8:00 We are a self-sufficient country in grain production, so why do we import grain from Ukraine at all? What does the minister think about the fears of Czech farmers that they will have nowhere to store grain?
8:00 – 11:54 What does he plan to do with the high prices of food, which are still above “normal”, and why does he recommend shopping at discount events?
11:54 – 15:33 What steps did he take within his department to lower food prices? Didn’t the ministry take too much time on this issue?
15:33 – 22:42 Why was the ministry’s response so late? Is there a healthy competitive environment in the food market in the Czech Republic? And how does he plan to regulate the market so that traders compete with each other in a healthy manner and the customer does not pay for it?
22:42 – 24:30 How is the communication between the ministry and traders?
24:30 – 28:51 The current government promised to deagrofertize the country, is it succeeding? How much money did Agrofert have to return to the state?
