Milk farmers blocked with their tractors the state road Zagreb-Karlovac in the town of Draganic at noon on Saturday and the police are rerouting the traffic through the village of Barkovici, Karlovac police said in a statement.

On behalf of about a hundred protesting milk farmers, Davorin Blazic, a members of the presidency of the Croatian Association of Milk Farmers, said the road was blocked so as to pressure those responsible to resume negotiations on acceptable conditions of milk production.

"We apologise to all people who are experiencing difficulties in traffic, but we have been forced to exert pressure to have the negotiations resume. We are fighting for all farmers, even for those who gave in to blackmail during the negotiations and for to me unknown reasons, agreed to the price of HRK 2.4 per litre, which is unacceptable," Blazic said.

Dairy farmers began protesting on Tuesday last week disgruntled with the purchase price of HRK 2.30 per litre offered by the Dukat dairy company, a cut of about HRK 0.40. Since then, they have been protesting in front of Dukat in Zagreb and its subsidiary Sirela in Bjelovar. The protest has spread to about 30 locations around the country.

Some milk farmers associations late on Thursday evening signed an agreement defining a model for determining the purchase price of milk under which the purchase price will be HRK 2.43 per kilo, however, the HSUPM national federation of dairy farmers' associations did not agree to the proposed price and will continue to protest.