Spain wants to force changes in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Specific modifications, but fundamental to be able to help Spanish farmers and ranchers in the face of the legal and bureaucratic problems that have led them to mobilize for eleven consecutive days. The Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, made a move yesterday by sending two letters to the Agriculture Commissioner and the Presidency of the Council of the EU, proposing to simplify the regulations and directly repeal some aspects.
The package of 22 modifications to the CAP that Spain proposed this Friday is aimed especially at the small and medium-sized farmer, who is the professional whom sources from the Ministry of Agriculture place at the center of the problem with the bureaucratic tangle. In the letter addressed to Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski, Planas advocated for responses that “emphasize small farmers.”
In the letter sent to the Presidency of the Council, which now corresponds to Belgium, Planas specified the Spanish proposals. Agriculture wants to raise the annual payment to 5,000 euros to qualify for the simplified small farmer regime (currently the limit is 1,250 euros) or “exempt farmers with less than 5 hectares [of crops] from conditionality controls.” The proposal also included the repeal of crop rotation on irrigated areas or the exemption of ecological areas in community regulations. Minister Planas also defended being able to graze on fallow lands in cases of drought and in areas of low rainfall or allowing vertical tillage of stubble and green fertilization.
In addition, Planas included in his proposal to eliminate the obligation to monitor agricultural farms with geotagged images, which would be mandatory from 2025. Spanish farmers report that on many of their farms there is no digital coverage to be able to comply with this standard. Planas agrees with this vision and pointed out in his letter that it is “an unapproachable requirement for both farmers and States.”
In the letters sent to the Commission and the Belgian presidency, they express their “great concern about the current situation of farmers’ protests in Spain.” One of the reasons for this discontent is, according to the minister, the strict application of the new CAP, which came into force on January 1, 2023. This has meant “significant additional complexity” and the “establishment of certain strategies that hinder the proper exercise of agricultural activity.” Measures, Planas pointed out, that “are not being understood” by the Spanish countryside.
Planas wants to serve as the spearhead to modify the CAP, as he committed to Asaja, COAG and UPA at Thursday’s meeting. If reasonable and coherent measures are not adopted, the head of Agriculture wrote in writing, the new CAP model “will be a failure and it will be necessary to return to the previous one, that is, to a policy based on compliance with requirements.”
“They have Spain’s commitment to contribute actively and constructively to this debate on simplification, which we consider essential to guarantee the good development of agricultural activity in the EU,” concludes Planas. The Spanish Government considers that the meeting of the Council of Agriculture Ministers on the 26th “is the appropriate forum” to address all these changes.
Farmer organizations maintained the planned mobilization schedule yesterday, despite the package proposed by the Government. This Friday there were road closures due to agricultural mobilizations in León, Teruel, Cuenca, Santander, Navarra and Pamplona. In Alicante, protesters threw a load of lemons onto the road to protest low prices and competition from other countries.
