Uroš Nikolić, dipl.Manager

Email: urosnikolic(at)ymail.com

Education

2012-2014
University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna

Masters programme
“Agriculture and Food Economy”

2007-2011
Agriculture Faculty Belgrade, Serbia
Bachelors programme
“Agricultural Economy”

Master thesis associated with the PhD-Projekt Agrarian Landuse

“Actual situation and the production potential of soybean in Serbia”

Serbia is one of the most important agricultural production regions in Central Europe. Favourable natural conditions with 2,5 million hectares of arable land support cash crop production. Since March 2012 Serbia has candidate status of the European Union and since the beginning of 2014 Serbia going through the accession negotiations. This will approximate the Serbian agricultural policy with the CAP and liberalize agricultural trade which is regulated by quotes since 2000. Like other Danube countries Serbia is a traditional grain corn producer with shares of up to 40% in the crop rotation. This thesis aims at examining the potential and effects of additional soybean production in Serbia. The analysis is based on secondary data like the agricultural census from the year 2011/12 of Statistics Serbia and other relevant institutions and examines data in detail on a local level. A Positive Mathematical Programming Model (PMP) has been developed and calibrated to municipality-specific crop shares. Price scenario analyses are performed to investigate the production potential. The focus is on estimating the production potential and changes in the rotation with a +10% soybean price increase. A data set of gross margins for family farms and agricultural enterprises for wheat, corn, soybean, sunflower, rapeseed and sugar beet of the period 2003-2013 was developed. The analysis shows that Serbia with an average soybean harvest of 325.000 tons is after Italy with 550.000 t the second largest producer in Europe. In the period 2003-2013, around 160.000 ha of soybean was annually harvested in Serbia, on average. The soybean production is highly concentrated in the region of Vojvodina with a share of 93% in the total of Serbia. In Serbia soybean has a share of 7% in the arable land, which corresponds to 37% of the EU-28 soybean production (0,43 million ha) and 0,2% of the worldwide soybean area (111 million ha). The soybean yield of 2,5 t/ha is above the EU average. In the analysed period, the production of soybeans moved from agricultural enterprises to family farms, so that 75% of all harvested soybean in Serbia comes from those producers. In 2013, soybean is for family farms, after sugar beet, the most economical crop and for enterprises on third place after sugar beet and rapeseed. Modeling a +10% soybean price increase under the ceteris paribus assumption leads to additional 53.000 ha of soybean areas reaching a total area of 232.626 ha. The additional volume of soybean production is 61.700 t. The model results also show that soybean has high production potential in municipalities along the rivers Danube, Sava and Velika Morava and that the region central Serbia becomes more important. In Serbia, the expansion of soybean production would mainly displace corn and wheat.

Supervisors
Supervisor: Schmid Erwin Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.
Co-supervisors: Sinabell Franz Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr., Mitter Hermine DDipl.-Ing.