[Applause]
the medika sheni border crossing between
Poland and Ukraine this is not the usual
traffic Nationwide Farmers protests in
Poland have come to this a blockade at
the border this Ukrainian driver has
been stuck on the Polish side for more
than two weeks he can't get back into
Ukraine there is no room in the car we
standing on the side cooking and now I'm
going to wash the dishes
farmers in Poland have been in Revolt
over low prices and bad conditions they
recently took their protest to the
capital wara matovski supports the
protest he is an Apple farmer business
is getting tougher and a lot is at stake
for his
family my father mik and one of my
brothers Tomic are with me for many
generations our family has been involved
in Fruit growing it's been over 100
years of food production as a
family father Brothers our wives my
in-laws we all deal strictly with apple
production we produce over a th000 tons
annually we are a farming family my
grandfather was a fruit grower my dad
and all of us went into this production
because we love working in the Orchard
and it brings us satisfaction
but I see that from an economic point of
view the situation is getting worse
because production costs are very high
and fruit prices are low fruit prices
are at the level of 15 years ago
production costs have increased over
these
years Farmers say the European Union is
responsible for the crisis because of
environmental regulations and the open
border policy for Ukraine in Poland the
crisis is a challenge for the new Pro EU
government which says it'll do all it
can to protect polish Farmers from
unfair
competition it is a fact that half of
the Arab land in Ukraine belongs to Agra
Holdings the largest Agra holding
comprises of more than 1 million
hectares of land such Farms cannot be
compared to any other farms in the
European Union what we see with the
imports from Ukraine is that the
stability may be slightly
imbalanced
as a show of solidarity with Ukraine
following Russia's Invasion the European
union agreed to allow goods from Ukraine
to come into the block with little to no
restrictions but farmers in Poland say
this support cannot come at the cost of
their
livelihoods these protests are not
against the citizens of Ukraine Ukraine
was
supportive I think the major majority of
Polish Farmers still support continuing
to support Ukraine whether militarily or
humanitarian two years ago when we
welcomed them when there were a lot of
refugees especially women and children I
think if someone followed the situation
foreign media they saw that in Poland
there was this willingness and openness
to welcome
them I emphasize this because this is
about the fure of Polish
agriculture the timing of the protests
as well as radical views expressed by
some demonstrators have aroused
suspicion that outside forces may be
exploiting the farmers's anger for
different ends the major question we
would today have is what happened that
just now in a such massive scale these
protests happen and here we can we can
expect that that's not by chance that it
can be also manipulated and it can be
also fuel you know it's like fuel it by
uh somebody else we are absolutely sure
Russia can use this protect as well to
create tensions within the EU countries
also in including Poland MOSI and many
polish farmers are prepared to put more
pressure on their government meanwhile
negotiations between Warsaw and keev are
on
going