In the second week of tractor drives on highways and streets in practically all of Spain, farmers are beginning to turn their gaze towards the legal epicenter of their commercial relations. Strengthening the law of the food chain is, according to the representative organizations of the field, a priority. It is a rule, says Pedro Barato, president of Asaja, “well-intentioned but useless, because it is not followed.” COAG sources provide a similar vision: “It has an impact, but it has not solved the problems of the sector in a generalized way.” The Ministry of Agriculture, which meets tomorrow the observatory that monitors economic relations in the food industry, claims to be working on changes to strengthen controls.

“The Government will regulate the prohibition of sales at a loss in Spain with more legal certainty,” proclaimed the Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, in December 2018. The Executive implemented the veto on prices below production cost with the aim of avoiding the destruction of value in the food chain. It was “a substantial change,” admits COAG, the organization promoting the current agrarian protests and which tomorrow wants to block Mercamadrid, “but it is difficult to change the way the sector works.”

“We see cases in which producers cannot defend their prices,” adds COAG. That is, they report selling fruits, vegetables or cereals at prices imposed by mediators or distributors and that do not cover their costs. This situation, which would be illegal according to the aforementioned law, occurs daily, the organization points out.

The field proposes two ways to stop these practices. First, the creation of a reference price index. An official table that, as will happen with the housing index to limit rental prices, serves to “know how much it costs to produce food at source.” At this moment “it does not exist,” highlights Barato, from Asaja, so that farmers’ costs are relative. COAG recalls that the Ministry of Economy once had official cost statistics. It was called Datacomin (Internal Trade Data) and was prepared by the Secretary of State for Commerce, specifying the “public sale prices of food items, weekly and by province.” It stopped publishing in 2018.

The other aspect in which farmers ask the Government to act is through inspections and sanctions. Asaja and COAG demand more vigilance because they see ample room to act against violations of the law. Not only do they ask to do it through the Food Information and Control Agency (AICA), which depends on Agriculture, but also that the autonomous communities can “inspect the operations that are limited within their territory.”

According to the IACA balance sheet, in 2022, 929 ex officio actions were carried out to determine the correct functioning of the commercial relationships of companies with their suppliers and customers. In the first half of 2023, the latest official data, there were 475 inspections. In total, between January 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture imposed 456 sanctions, of which 51% correspond to non-compliance with payment deadlines. 31% of the sanctions imposed during this period fell on the fruit and vegetable sector, and 29% on the wine sector.

Asaja and COAG also demand “that the amounts of the sanctions be higher.” The consumer organization Facua reported yesterday that the fines for failing to comply with the food chain law have fallen to 3,300 euros on average in 2024 and that none refer to sales at a loss. The largest sanction in the final resolution was to Alcampo for an amount of 39,600 euros for “resistance, obstruction, excuse or refusal of the actions of the Administration.”

Farmers also need to modify the way they report alleged irregular practices, an option provided for in the state regulation, since, once a farmer decides to go to the AICA, he is required to present evidence that “disincentivizes” reporting.

The Government is willing to “strengthen inspections”, assures the Ministry of Agriculture, in matters of “control of commercial relations”. For Pedro Barato, the president of Asaja, an organization integrated into the CEOE, the solution to the problems of the Spanish countryside involves “an equitable distribution” of the sale of food: “One third for those who produce, another for those who transform and another for those who sell.”