Twenty-five denars for a kilo of red ajvar pepper. That's the purchase price the processing plants are offering growers in Strumica. After a whole year of work, water, fertiliser, plastic sheeting and seasonal disasters, twenty-five denars. For comparison, peppers for export are bought at 35 to 45 denars.

Farmers from Murtino protested today and announced a blockade of the road from Strumica to the Novo Selo border crossing - the road to Bulgaria. Growers from the other villages around Strumica joined them.

"It isn't normal that after a whole year of toil, sweat and expense our crop is bought at a miserable 25 denars a kilo, a price that doesn't even cover the basic inputs for production, as if a farmer's labour has no value at all," the producers say.

The number that explains the anger

According to the producers, this year's purchase prices at the start of the harvest are 20 percent lower than in the same period last year. Twenty percent down in a year in which production costs haven't fallen 20 percent anywhere in the world.

And this is the second blow in the same season. These same people saved their crop from spring floods this year, then rebuilt greenhouses destroyed by strong winds two weeks ago. "Do the authorities know how this is produced, how we struggled when the spring floods came," the growers ask.

They're asking for one thing: that Agriculture Minister Borche Serafimovski come to Strumica and get the buyers and processors around the same table. They aren't asking for a subsidy, they aren't asking for a guaranteed price by decree. They're asking for mediation.

Why this isn't local news

The Strumica region is the country's market-gardening heart. If production there stops paying, it doesn't mean peppers will vanish from the market - it means they'll come from imports, at a price the consumer pays and the farmer never sees.

"We live off crumbs and on credit. If the minister doesn't come to us, we're warning of blockades on the road to Bulgaria," said the association that initiated the protest.

Blocking a border road is the last resort of people who have no other way to be heard. The question isn't whether the blockade is justified. The question is why every year the same discussion only starts once the tractor is on the asphalt.