Family Cooperative with Great Plans

It is known that the land in the area of Turija has high contents of humus, and is of high quality and fertile. Cooperation between the agricultural cooperative Tera Nova in Turija managed by the director Marko Tatić and Victoria Logistic is of a quality as is that land. “This cooperation has lasted since the very establishment of the cooperative, in 2002” - says Nevena Tatić, one of the founders of the cooperative, and adds, “Mutual satisfaction is what is most important in our business relation. Our cooperative is a family cooperative, which does business with about only thirty co-operative farmers who individually posses 5 to 30 ha of land, and who we can freely say are our personal friends. The cooperative employs ten persons and owns a small area of land, while the larger part is leased by bidding.”

“The problem with taking land under lease is the applicable law, which allows only persons who are resident of Srbobran, for example, to bid for the land in the Srbobran area, which has a surface of about 5,000 ha. We think that coming from Turija we should also have a right to bid for that land, since we live here, pay taxes. If we had the right to take more land under lease, we would do it certainly, since the mechanisation we possess provides objective possibilities for that. Currently, two-thirds of our business is carried out in the area of Turija, and one-third in the area of Srbobran. As for the sowing structure, we most often sow soybean, maize, and sugar beet on a third of the land each. We sow wheat on a very small area, and as for the sowing of sunflower, we decide it depending on the year. The area to be sown depends on the land we will manage to procure in auction in addition to ours. This year, it is about 500 ha of land. In this region, land is extremely fertile, of good quality, and all this makes demand for it very high. In addition, there is increasing number of people opting to be occupied with agriculture. We have decided to cultivate sugar beet since it has proved to us to be the most cost-effective crop, and we also possess a Holmer sugar beet cleaner and loader, which certainly makes our work quicker and easier. We provide our co-operative members with complete raw material. In addition, we provide them with services of combine harvesting and sowing as needed. We have a scale, so farmers may come here directly from the field, we make analyses, receive the produce that is stored in the shed until the vehicles of a certain company come” - adds Nevena.

“We try to improve each year, and we keep investing in the operation of the cooperative. At the moment, an irrigation project is of great importance for us, we drill wells so by introducing irrigation we want to start cultivating crop plants. We will start cultivating maize and garlic this year, and we will see for the future, but we also strive to increase the areas that we cultivate. If we speak about long-term plans, we should certainly mention the plan for construction of storage facilities, since currently we have only automated pallet live storage warehouses. We base our operations on the application of all agrotechnical measures. We can say that soil analysis is a measure that is very usual, which is implied and is readily applied by the farmers. From the results of the analysis, we decide what mineral fertilisers we will use. Only with thorough knowledge about quality and needs of the soil, we can make right decisions and expect higher yields per unit area.

“As for the cooperation with Victoria Logistic, it makes for 60% of our total operations, and the types of cooperation are enabling good, timely supply with raw materials, purchase of the soybean with full logistic support, as well as correct, business relationship which contributes to mutual satisfaction,” says Nevena at the end of the conversation, with belief that this cooperation will survive indefinitely.