Farmers Warn Plagues of Field Mice Decimating Autumn Crops

Farmers (BETAPHOTO/LJILJANA STUPAR)

Autumn crops in Serbia have been infested with field mice, forcing farmers to search by foot farming land to look for mouse holes and place poison, which all cost them extra money. 

A farmer from the Banat region, Vojislav Malbaski, has told BETA that he has 60 hectares of land planted with wheat and had spent around RSD100,000 on various products. He added that some farmers had to replough their land as mice had eaten leaves, destroying crops. 

Another farmer, Miroslav Matkovic from Subotica, has said that they cannot mix chemical substances with mineral fertilizers and disperse them using agriculture machines, because of extremely high fines in case some other animals get poisoned. For now, farmers say, no assistance in fighting rodents has been offered by the line ministry or advisory agricultural services, nor have they been advised which substance to use. 

The head of the Animal Hygiene Department at the Belgrade Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Milutin Djordjevic, has said that a mild winter has caused a growth in the rodent population. Rodenticides are chemicals used to kill rodents, but they tend to be used on farming land without proper control, causing massive poisoning of game animal. 

That is why, Djordjevic said, farming land owners often paid high fines and were even called for criminal accountability in case poisons killed any of the endangered species.