Alarm in the Catalan livestock sector before the meeting of the Interdepartmental Drought Commission, which is expected to declare an emergency situation this Thursday, with maximum alert in the areas served by the Ter and Llobregat reservoirs, 200 municipalities of Barcelona, ??Girona and Riner and Pinós del Solsonès (Lleida). The declaration will impose a 50% reduction in water consumption on farms in the affected regions.
“The cows have to keep drinking. “They are animals that are producing, you cannot leave them without water, consumption in cleaning and other work will have to be reduced.” This is what Joan Gel tells it, who gives water to the animals from a well on his Dosrius farm, in Maresme.
Rosa Pruna, president of Asaja de Barcelona, ??has a beef farm in Les Franqueses del Vallès, another of the municipalities affected by the emergency and that also uses water from its own wells. She insists that ranchers, in most cases, do not use water from the urban network, but from their own wells and have already had savings plans for many years. “What scares us is that with the repeated drought, these wells will stay dry,” she says.
The head of organization of Unió de Pagesos, Carles Vicente, believes that an uncertain and unknown situation is arriving. “We will enter emergency phase 1, we have to save on livestock farms,” he maintains. “You shouldn’t just think about drinking water, there may be savings in cleaning facilities or trucks, the situation is not easy, savings plans will have to be made.”
Their biggest concern is reaching phase 2, which will entail a reduction in the entry of animals, a moment in which the union wants to propose guaranteeing the productive potential of the breeders: “We would have to have a commitment that the productive potential would be preserved.”
Given this scenario, the union has asked the Department of Climate Action not to paralyze the administrative task of authorizing farms, being aware that some farms have already built, have permits and are a few months away from filling them with livestock and that it would be interesting that there were liquidity credits.
In the case of crops to reduce production, Unió de Pagesos will claim aid. “We will ask the administration what support can be guaranteed to farmers because there is no insurance for not working.”
Mauri Bosch, farmer of Young Farmers and Cattlemen of Catalonia in Viladecans, says that they have been working with reclaimed water in the area for a long time. His biggest fear is that the restrictions will accelerate salinization.
Some farmers are not clear about their continuity in the next agricultural campaign. Vicens Pont has spent his whole life sowing ‘calçots’ and ‘crochet beans’ in La Roca del Vallès, one of the 200 municipalities in the dreaded emergency phase due to the drought. On the verge of ending the ‘underpants’ campaign, he admits that he is 90% inclined not to sow, although he doesn’t know what he will do if he doesn’t
And not only in these 200, but also in others, now in the pre-alert phase nervousness arrives. This is the case of Martí Costal, head of JARC’s water sector. He grows apple trees in Jafre (Girona) and assures that the situation is so serious that he no longer has “the desire to fight anymore”, although he cannot leave it because he has to face payments. “I no longer invest, I limit myself to taking out what she can and thinking about liquidating, my daughter has been with me for a few years and is already rethinking her future,” he laments.
This Wednesday he was in his town with a fellow sheep farmer and forage producer, Josep de Ros, from a neighboring town, Garrigoles, very concerned about the increase in costs, the lack of pasture, which forces ranchers to import fodder from France and the possibility of reduced water supply at watering holes.
The damage caused by the drought in agriculture has triggered the accident rate recorded by agricultural insurance in 2023 to reach record figures in Spain of 1,241 million euros, surpassing, by far (56%), the record of 2022. With 3.5 million hectares, the damaged area is close to 60% of the insured area. when a record number of 793 million was already produced, due to the drought and the constant passage of storm fronts. This Thursday, Agroseguro will make public the data for Catalonia.
