The protestors, who marched to the government building to the accompaniment of a brass band, carried slogans like "Give the Bulgarian Farmer a Chance", "Good Crops, Low Inflation", and "We Want Our Money", and demanded the resignation of Agriculture Minister Valeri Tsvetanov.
"We want 378 million levs ($279 million/193.2 million euro) in national co-payments next year. They promised us the money, it was included in the draft budget but, in the end, the gentlemen from the tri-partite coalition failed to vote it in the final budget," Kancho Radev, a farm lessee from Radnevo, in southeast Bulgaria, told SeeNews.
Earlier this week, Bulgaria's parliament adopted the budget bill for next year.
"If we don't get the [national] co-payment, we will not move from here. We will bring out more machines and continue protesting," Radev said.
"Our demands represent less than one percent of the budget," Marin Gavrilov, a farmer in Dermantsi village, in the north, told SeeNews.
"My question is [...] where is the place of agriculture in the economy?" Gavrilov added.
Grain producers demanded to talk with Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev and warned they will block Sofia with their farm machines if he declined to meet them, state-run news agency BTA reported, quoting National Association of Grain Producers executive director Radoslav Hristov.
This summer, milk producers and stockbreeders held several protest rallies around the country, blocking key roads. In addition to increased subsidies, famers demanded a cut in the 20% value added tax levied on farm produce, a fixed minimum purchase price of milk, and allocation of state and municipal land for pastures.
The European Commission halted payment of 121 million euro in SAPARD pre-accession aid to farmers in July, when the EU executive issued two critical reports on Bulgaria’s weak results in fighting high level corruption and organised crime, and stripped two Bulgarian government agencies of the right to handle EU funds. Overall 102 irregularities have been identified in the agricultural subsidy programme.
(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)
