The Alicante cherry has been in the campaign for four months and this year they are getting especially long. There is almost no production and the picotas or burlats, two specific varieties that are grown in the PGI Cerezas de la Montaña in Alicante, hardly reach the final consumer. The problem is in the countryside, which this campaign is suffering from the effect of the May rains that “have ruined”, according to La Unió Llauradora i Ramadera, the harvest in a large part of the producing areas, with special incidence in the PGI area. .
The agricultural association explains that in this area there were already many farms with total losses, since to the rainfall of this strange spring we must add the previous drought and the high temperatures in flowering.
Consequently, there are few Alicante cherries on the supermarket shelves. They explain it from Mercadona, which works with 13 suppliers from four producing areas: Valle del Jerte, Alicante, Catalonia and Aragon. Company sources explain that this year the producing areas of Valle del Jerte and Alicante have lowered their production “mainly due to the rains, therefore supplies arrive from Aragon and Catalonia.” And although they sell cherries in all their stores, the supermarket expects the campaign to end a little earlier, at the end of July, due to weather conditions.
The truth is that from La Unió they explain that “it is one of the crops that climate change is most affecting”. The entity also stresses that in this PGI some 4 million kilos were expected this campaign, which will have remained at just 500,000 kilos.
On the other hand, from Asaja Alicante they explain that the cherry harvest is right now the main problem of the association, overturned this Wednesday in a meeting with mayors of the 42 affected municipalities (40 from the province of Alicante and two from Valencia), technicians from the agricultural association, packaging companies, cooperatives and producers from the areas covered by the PGI Cerezas de Alicante quality mark to quantify the losses.
With the data and the evaluations that come out of the meeting, they will put together a proposal to take tomorrow to the requested meeting with the acting Minister of Agriculture, Isaura Navarro, to whom they will propose a crash plan for the cultivation of cherries.
In this meeting, as this medium has been able to learn, they will request the declaration of a catastrophic zone, a comprehensive crash plan, direct aid to the bottling plants, tax measures and a new specific agricultural insurance for this IGP, since they point out that the losses production and agricultural damage occurs in 98% of production. In detail, the shock plan includes a decree of aid to producers similar to the one for the drought that covers damages not covered by agricultural insurance, one of the main obstacles that the sector encounters in this particularly complicated campaign.
It is one of the claims that La Unió also makes, which explains that the current agricultural insurance “is not adapting to the requirements in terms of coverage caused by climate change, in addition to the fact that the guaranteed yields are not adjusted to the realities of production of the exploitations”. In this sense, according to data from La Unió, in 2022 only 1,044 cherry insurance policies were contracted throughout Spain for an area of ??6,146 hectares and 38.2 million kilos. In the Valencian Community there were only 174 policies for 849 hectares.
Likewise, in the meeting on Thursday with Minister Navarro, they will also request that, through the Valencian Institute of Finance, there be a line of subsidized loans “designed ad hoc for cherry producers and packaging companies”, as well as a module discount, Exemption from the rustic IBI for cherry farms and cancellation of Social Security for 14 months.
It also proposes a reduction of the net income index in the IRPF for the productions affected by accidents with damages greater than 30% in the cultivation of the cherry tree or the cancellation of the payment of the IBI. It also demands a bonus of 50% of Social Security contributions and the deferral of the other 50% for 12 months for those included in the Special System for Self-Employed Agricultural Workers established in the Special Social Security Regime for Workers for Own or Self-Employed. And finally, the organization proposes that in the case of claims with damages greater than 30%, preferential credit lines of five years be established, with a grace period of one year, and with a total discount on interest.
