2023-11-08 21:23:42
The Federation of Agrarian Cooperatives of Catalonia (FCAC) and Young Farmers and Ranchers of Catalonia (JARC) are calling on Climate Action to amend the draft Aid Order for agricultural holdings with herbaceous crops and irrigated and dry-land orchards and rice affected by the drought, and grants are granted based on the total cultivated area and not with a maximum amount per producer. In this way, they remember that in Catalonia, cereal producers up to 65 hectares cannot be dedicated exclusively to this product, while those who do it professionally can have between 100 and 300 hectares. The draft call for aid prepared by the Generalitat provides for a maximum aid ceiling per producer of 45,000 euros.
JARC’s head of cereal sector, Vicenç Pascual, said that the aid policy should be able to compensate all those affected based on an “objective logic” so that whoever has been most harmed, because it is dedicated to main form, should not be penalized and should not be paid the same as one who is less engaged in it. For that, from the FCAC and JARC, defend that the producer should charge based on the damage per hectare, taking into account the entire extent of his crop.
For his part, FCAC’s head of herbaceous crops and fodder, Santi Vergé, commented that the cereal producers were “in solidarity” and stopped irrigating, in exchange for some aid, with the aim that the fruit growers could save the fruit trees and the fruit harvest. Now, he adds, “the essential thing” is to help all grain producers and, with the ceiling set by the Department, he considers that professional farmers are being harmed. In this sense, the two agricultural organizations remember that Catalonia is a country that is not self-sufficient in the cultivation of cereal and is therefore forced to import it from outside.
The request
According to the FCAC and JARC, the draft of the call for aid prepared by the Generalitat envisages a maximum aid ceiling of 45,000 euros per producer. For that, they want to make the Government understand that it makes no sense to grant the same financial aid to a producer with an area of 65 hectares as to one with 300since it is “obvious” that the producer with more will have suffered almost five times more damage than the one with less.
The initial forecast was, according to the organizations, that last September the order was approved that would have allowed the grants to go ahead so that they could be collected during the first quarter of 2024, but this delay in the management and granting of the grants makes it difficult future of cereal production in the country. FCAC and JARC recall that this is the third time they have demanded from the Government that these grants be granted in accordance with the total amount of damage per hectare. This Wednesday, a meeting is planned with the Secretary of Rural Agenda, Oriol Anson, to discuss, among others, this issue.
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