Choked by the harvest: “Last year, we didn't even harvest dry land”

Always looking to the sky, whatever may happen, most farmers usually have some money saved in case they lose the harvest. “After three or four good years, the last campaign was the second in which we did not get anything, last year in dry land we did not even harvest. There are people who no longer pay.” This is what Joan Piera Mota, a 37-year-old farmer from Preixana, a town of 400 inhabitants in the Urgell region, tells it.

He cultivates about 400 hectares of dryland and around 100 of irrigated land in his town and also in Verdú. When there was no lack of water he planted corn, barley, oats, rapeseed and wheat. Now he can no longer risk planting corn, he needs more water. The closure last year of the Urgell canal left it without irrigation, the water was reserved to save the trees.

“We had been defending ourselves for three or four seasons. The one in 2023 was the second in a row without getting anything. The average yield per hectare reached 200 kilos of cereal when on average it exceeds 3,000,” he says from his tractor while sulfating.

Under irrigation, farmers in their area have harvested a third of what they usually obtained. “They closed the canal on April 25, we were very behind on irrigation because we had little water, but from that date on we didn’t water anything else, a disaster,” he says.

Until a few weeks ago I was convinced that 2024 would be another horrible year, but the latest rains have been hopeful; For now, the sky gives him a break.

To the question of how to endure two ruinous seasons in the countryside, he answers by saying that in the peasant houses there are savings. They remember afternoons of hail in which in a few hours the farms are destroyed or nights of frost in which everything is lost.

The drought has eaten up the savings from previous campaigns, to tighten the belt they are beginning to skimp on fertilizers.

“Living exclusively on cereal is impossible, one has a farm, the other has fruit trees, another has almond and olive trees or pistachios,” he explains. He has a pig farm and has always combined that work with his farm tasks and also going to harvest cereals and collect straw from other farmers. Saving the farm, in everything else he has had to reinvent himself.

Joan has moved throughout Spain harvesting. He is also a jerk. He is dedicated to collecting straw in dry Spain. It is one more business to fill the bag and have extra money to endure a year like this. “I always go with trailers, I make the huge piles of straw that you see when traveling by road,” he says.

Normally packing starts on May 25 in the Lleida area and ends in September. At the end of the month it is usually in the upper area of ??Burgos.

“This year, on August 24, I was already home and we were done. Here in the Lleida area we did not collect anything. We were unemployed, we worked for about three weeks in Burgos and we have not worked anymore because in Huesca or Lleida there was no harvest.”

In addition to the difficulties of drought, in recent years rabbit infestations have been added to their town, which are causing great damage. He is part of a platform that fights against the plague. Last week he participated in the rally in support of the union leaders whom Pacma denounced for animal abuse in a protest in Lleida.

“We have meetings almost every week with those responsible for the Department of Climate Action, Food and Rural Agenda, who have killed 437,000 rabbits. Their reports already acknowledge that there are many more rabbits than last year, every year there are more,” he says.

“Two years ago, when we were left without a store due to retirement, the City Council opened a business.” The City Council inherited a house. At the top there are rural accommodations and the establishment below. There is one worker and she is open six days a week. Older people can now go shopping every day.

When he was little, Joan always said he wanted to be a farmer. He considers himself a farmer “by vocation.” “When we left school I would go with my father or my uncle with the tractors, with the crops or with whatever.”

When he thought about his future, he saw the Segarra-Garrigues canal, the largest hydraulic infrastructure in Catalonia, a great hope for his people. Just when he decided to stay on the family farm, Preixana was included in the special protection areas for birds (SPA) of the Grand Canal.

“If I had known that in my town the entire ZEPA would be declared, and we would not be able to irrigate, I probably would not have stayed. I stayed at home in 2009. That year in my town the land concentration was carried out to irrigate the Segarra-Garrigues canal,” he emphasizes.

Yes, you can irrigate in your town on the Urgell canal, which has just started the irrigation campaign.

Pending the modernization of the channel, for him, the call for elections to the Generalitat for May 12 has not been good news. “The Generalitat’s budget project included aid for the modernization of the Urgell canal, now we will have to wait another year and we will have to wait,” he laments.