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In The Photos of the Readers of La Vanguardia we can see this sad image of a dry cereal field in Ivars d’Urgell, in the Urgell region.
The rains came late and the morale of the farmer was ruined. And it is that, when the soil cracks and you lose the harvest, the farmer’s heart breaks.
At the beginning of April the signs already seemed clear (dry leaves and plants spiky before their time), a bad omen that has ended up being confirmed.
The cereal harvest in the Plana de Lleida area suffers the consequences of the lack of water after recent months marked by drought, a trend that the rains only broke too late.
There are personal and collective stories of farmers who have seen half (or more) of their crops lost, since many cereal fields have not borne fruit. The problem is that the high temperatures of the dry spring advanced the spike, for example, of wheat, later, the leaves dried up just when they needed more water.
Not only in Urgell, but also in Garrigues, Segrià or Noguera Baixa, farmers with cereal fields are having a hard time. Also in La Segarra.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPA) proposed a double way to distribute the drought aid fund for agriculture: by crops and depending on the degree of water scarcity in each autonomous community, a plan that has not fully convinced the agricultural sector.
This was expressed by the agrarian organizations Asaja, COAG and UPA. The money to be distributed is the 276.7 million euros that make up the fund that was appropriated for agriculture within the royal decree-law on drought aid for the agricultural sector as a whole, which as a whole reaches a total value of 784 million. , adding the item for livestock, as well as other fiscal, financial, socio-labour or hydraulic support measures, among others.
The representatives of the agrarian organizations have explained that the MAPA has asked them that around 75% of those 276.7 million be allocated to arable crops, including legumes and winter cereals and excluding sunflowers.
“Another important game” would go to stone fruit and a smaller game for rice and tomato, leaving out the olive grove and vineyard, according to the MAPA plan.
In addition, a second distribution route has been proposed that would go according to the degree of drought in each autonomous community, so that some such as Andalusia, Castilla-La Mancha or the Valencian Community, for example, would be considered as high drought and others as Extremadura and Castilla y León would be in a lower grade.
This measure has been the least liked by agricultural organizations and they have raised it to MAPA, which will study the different requirements that the sector has sent them before announcing the final plan to distribute the aid in the coming days.
