The Government reinforces the measures it offers to farmers and ranchers to try to quell rural protests or, at least, part of them. The Ministry of Agriculture announced today that last week it sent a new document to agricultural professional organizations with 43 measures with the aim of trying to respond to part of the demands they have expressed in the different tractors that have occurred in the entire country during the last two months. Among the new proposals is a package of 700 million in credits on favorable conditions. The Executive is waiting for a response from the conveners of the tractor units during February.
The proposal that the Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, has conveyed to the representatives of Asaja, COAG and UPA consists of a financing package from the ICO divided into two: 200 million to guarantee young professionals with the aim of promoting generational change and another 700 million for farmers and ranchers in soft loans.
The fiscal package includes more measures, such as maintaining deductions on fuel or fertilizers, expanding the general reduction in net yield or aid for eco-regimes. Agriculture and the Treasury are also studying excluding income from VAT compensation from the maximum limit for taxation in the module regime. Thus, the measure to raise the threshold for paying taxes in the module system from 250,000 to 300,000 euros is cooled, but the Government is working on not taking certain incomes into account. In France, farmers and ranchers can only pay taxes under the French module regime if their income does not exceed 70,000 euros.
There are more measures that Planas has stated that will come into force immediately, others will do so retroactively and others will have to wait. The simplification and flexibility of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), for example, will already apply in 2024 and 2025. The Government also proposes, in collaboration with the autonomous communities, to increase agricultural insurance aid.
One of Agriculture’s promises is to reinforce the food chain law, which prohibits sales at a loss, with more inspections. To this end, Planas announced the creation of a state control agency based on the current Food Information and Control Agency (IACA). The ministry has not yet decided whether it will propose a bill or introduce an amendment to an ongoing legislative initiative. Planas stated today that he leans towards the second option to accelerate the creation of this new oversight body.
The Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, has been optimistic about the possibility that the EU will end up approving the long-awaited mirror clauses, that is, that products produced outside the community market will be required to have the same conditions as national ones. Spain and France are trying, but the opposition of the Nordic countries, mainly dependent on imports, prevents it. Planas has stated that he appreciates a change in the European Commission and that he is optimistic about this debate during the next community legislature.
Planas has highlighted the results of the debate that took place within the EU in recent days. In the European Council, the leaders spent half an hour debating agriculture and in the Council of Ministers of the sector they agreed to simplify and make the CAP more flexible, something, according to Agriculture, difficult to think about before the protests in the streets.
Planas recalled the payment of 1,400 million in direct aid to 131,000 farmers and ranchers from 2022. “It is the largest State aid to the agricultural sector outside the CAP,” he highlighted. With this package of measures, Agriculture considers that it offers help to the problems of the countryside. “Do we solve everything? No,” the minister concluded.
