The main agricultural organizations in Spain maintain the call for protests after the meeting held yesterday with the Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, in Madrid. Asaja, Coag and UPA have promoted mobilizations throughout February to demand improvements in the primary sector, and have thus added to the wave of protests that is sweeping Europe and that has had a large following in France. Farmers’ strikes and rallies have also taken place in recent weeks in Germany and the Netherlands and are planned in Portugal.
“The sector will be on the streets next week and throughout the month to claim our jobs, our profession and this agriculture that we have always done well and now they don’t let us do it,” said the vice president of Asaja, José, at the end of the meeting in statements collected by Efe. Members of the Union of Unions, the Catalan equivalent of the Union of Farmers, gathered at the doors of the ministry, who regretted not having been included in the meeting.
Protests are planned in several autonomous communities and on different days. Some driven by the aforementioned groups, and others by alternative sectors of various political ideologies. As a whole, the agricultural sector calls for an “ambitious” shock plan that includes measures both on a European scale, as well as by the central government and the autonomous communities to address the consequences of the drought and the war in Ukraine, prices and production costs, demand a simplification and flexibility of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), and also a review of the environmental requirements.
“We are facing the perfect storm with the drought, with the prices and with this common agricultural policy that prioritizes the environment more than the farmer and the rancher”, lamented the vice-president of Asaja.
“Regulatory suffocation is the most important complaint that can be heard in any corner of Spain and Europe. We ask for the simplification of the bureaucracy because it is suffocating us”, said the general secretary of Coag, Miguel Padilla. The field also demands action against what it considers “unfair competition” from non-EU countries which, they complain, sell to Europe at lower prices and without meeting the same requirements.
Padilla also asked for improvements in the application of the Agro-Food Chain law and complained about the “low price” at the origin of some products. The average prices received by farmers in December 2023 were 50% higher than those received in 2021, according to data from the Ministry of Agriculture. Agricultural income grew, according to Agriculture, by 11.1% in 2023 and stood at 31,931 million euros (historical maximum).
Minister Planas pledged to find solutions to the demands of the sector and advanced that he will only support changes in the PAC that are “in line” with the interests of Spanish farmers. His offer, however, has not prevented the mobilizations from continuing this month.
