The president of the Junta de AndalucÃa, Juanma Moreno, has requested by letter to the president of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, the “cessation of the campaign of harassment” from his Executive to the farmers of the red fruits of Huelva and has offered him to open a collaboration process between both administrations in the search for solutions that make the viability of this sector compatible with that of the Doñana Natural Area.
In the letter, dated this Tuesday, June 6, Moreno criticizes the “absolutely complicit position” of Sánchez and the Third Vice President of the Government and Minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, in the face of the “last defamatory campaign” against the sector of the red fruits of Huelva, after both shared on their social networks the boycott promoted by the Campact organization against the sale of strawberries of Huelva origin in German supermarkets.
In his opinion, this attitude of Sánchez and Ribera has “generated considerable indignation in Andalusia and a feeling of defenselessness in the face of those who, with unknown interests, only seek to discredit our brand and ruin our farmers.”
In this sense, the head of the Andalusian Executive emphasizes that “no political objective, no electoral campaign can justify that the Government of Spain, in the mouth of its president and its Minister of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, gives protection and even diffusion to a succession of falsehoods that endanger the profitability and continuity of a sector as important in the Andalusian economy as that of red fruits and, with it, the employment and living conditions of thousands of Andalusians”.
For all these reasons, Moreno asks Sánchez, like the rest of the members of the Government of Spain, to “cease this campaign of harassment of the farmers of Huelva” and offers, “as I have been doing for months, to open a collaboration process between both administrations in the search for solutions that make the viability of the Huelva red fruit sector compatible with that of the Doñana Natural Area, in whose preservation we are firmly committed”.
The President of the Board underlines in his letter the “enormous concern” generated in Huelva and throughout Andalusia by “any campaign that calls into question the quality and sustainability of our agricultural production, especially when these are produced without argumentative basis any and with the sole intention of generating damage that is difficult to repair to an economic activity on which thousands of families depend”.
“Farmers and the Andalusian Government have faced these attacks for decades, almost always unfounded and full of ignorance, and, until now, I had found in the Government of Spain, regardless of its political color, a faithful ally to put a stop to hoaxes and return to our products the prestige they had legitimately earned”, adds Moreno, who highlights the “image of excellence” achieved over decades by Huelva farmers with “enormous advances in the transformation of their farms in sustainable crops with the consequent saving of water”.
Finally, Moreno reminded Sánchez that the province of Huelva concentrates 98% of the national production of red fruits (strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries), a sector that generates some 160,000 direct and indirect jobs and that exports top quality products. for a value of 1,392 million euros, to the point that the sector represents 11.35% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the province.
