Batocina

Batočina exists because the Great Morava's floodplain created some of Serbia's most fertile land—and because flooding made this stretch too risky for larger settlements. The municipality sits in the granary of central Serbia, where corn, wheat, sugar beet, and sunflower thrive on alluvial soil deposited over millennia. The Morava valley produces the fruit and vegetables that feed Serbian cities: peppers from Vranje, tomatoes from Leskovac, and melons and watermelons from the northern stretches near Batočina itself.

But fertile floodplains come with costs. The town's 5,100 residents (2022 census) live in a landscape shaped by agricultural cycles and flood risk. Unlike Ćuprija, which gambled on riverside location and paid with regular inundation, Batočina keeps a prudent distance. The result is prosperity without growth: productive land that exports calories but not jobs. Young people leave for Kragujevac and Belgrade; the municipality's 10,000 residents represent decades of demographic decline even as agricultural output remains steady.

By 2026, Batočina's trajectory follows the pattern of productive rural Serbia: mechanized agriculture that needs fewer workers, aging farmers whose children have moved to cities, and land whose value depends entirely on what grows from it. The granary fills; the town empties.