2024-01-01 19:06:46
Bad prospects for the Girona peasantry with the start of the new year and the emergency decree planned for when the country’s internal basins are below 16%. A situation that indicates that it will occur throughout the month of January and that causes important restrictions for agriculture and livestock. In fact, from the Union of Farmers they don’t hide the concern that production will suffer noticeably and it will be “a bad year”. The coordinator of the union in the Girona regions, Narcís Poch, points out that they face the new year with “discouraging” and that they do not see any short-term solutions.
One of the main consequences of the drought has been the change of crops that have had to be made by the cereal sector, which has traditionally planted corn and sorghum during the spring to grow it in the summer.
These two products, however, require a large amount of water and the solution they have found has been to exchange them for winter cereals such as barley or wheat which do not need so much. However, this has also led to a significant drop in income. As an example, corn will invoice between 2,000 and 3,000 gross euros less per hectare.
And it is that the irrigation sector is particularly affected, although Poch trusts that the flexibility of the measures in order to be able to ensure production in a year that is already taken for granted that it will be bad. However, Poch remembers that if there is no water availability the problem will continue to exist. In this sense, the coordinator of UP in the Girona counties remembers that last year the irrigators received a “ridiculous allocation” of 10% and this year if it doesn’t rain, take for granted that it will be null.
They have done their homework
The change of cultivation for another, on the other hand, cannot be done in the case of fruit. However, Poch emphasizes that the work has been done and that they have been implementing water-saving measures in the irrigation of these trees for years. That is why he asks that the flexibility be applied especially in these cases where it is not possible to modify the cultivation of the field.
The Generalitat announced last December 20 that it would relax the restrictions – which reached up to 80% of water use – for farmers, ranchers and nurseries who presented a water saving plan.
That cities “don’t take water from the river”
Although Poch has recognized that the short-term solution is to fill the reservoirs, from UP they are calling for a change in policy in relation to the supply to the cities. In this regard, the union proposes that the water return to the rivers “and can be used for irrigation, so that the fauna can drink or so that the aquifers can recover”.
#Girona #peasantry #pessimistic #emergency #decree