Priority development programs for processing of agricultural products in Eastern Croatia

In the Eastern Croatia, there are natural conditions for developing food industry and small family entrepreneurship for agricultural product processing. Favorable conditions include sufficient areas of high quality soil, good climate conditions for agricultural production and irrigation possibility. In addition, there are many years of experience in the production, the old tradition, a sufficient number of highly trained personnel and quality of research institutes in that area. Production of agricultural products is relatively well developed in relation to the other regions in Croatia. However, production of certain agricultural products is not sufficiently developed and represented in relation to the natural capacities (fruits, vegetables industrial crops and cattle products). In the Eastern Croatia, there are certain capacities for processing of agricultural products. That processing involves mostly so-called basic food industry, namely, production of sugar, flour, meat, milk and to some extent edible oil. In the past several decades, the development of agricultural product processing was not sufficiently monitored the possibilities of the agricultural production. Because of that, the basic food industry was not enough developed and less than above mentioned was developed the food industry with higher level of product finalization. Croatia, but especially the Eastern Croatia is lagging in the production of foods preserved by low temperatures, cooling and freezing. In this paper, the production, import, export and consumption of food in Croatia from 1997 to 2010 years were analyzed.The priority programs of processing of agricultural products and other conditions necessary to initiate the development of these processing, were defined too. Guidelines of structural sowing changes in agricultural production were given and identified the other problems important for development of agricultural processing.