2023-07-05 18:28:44
Half a thousand farmers, with dozens of tractors as an escort, demonstrated yesterday through the center of Madrid to end up at the Ministry of Agriculture and demand more measures against the drought, considering that the aid granted by the Government is only enough to cover a 3% of the losses they are registering. «The aid is a shame. Farmers who are going to lose 900 euros per hectare are going to give them 25 euros per hectare. The conditions that they have put on us this year to collect the agro-community policy are a shame, “they snapped at the minister Luis Planas.
The Ministry of Agriculture announced on Tuesday that it has initiated the procedure to pay a total of 712.7 million euros in extraordinary aid to farmers and ranchers affected by the drought. This announcement has further encouraged the protest, which started from the Glorieta de Cibeles until it reached the doors of the Ministry of Agriculture, in front of the Atocha station, it has also been conceived as “a call to attention to the citizens of Madrid, because with the drought, with production costs and with the contempt of politicians, it will be almost impossible to reduce the increase in oil purchase prices,” said Luis Cortés, from the Union of Farmers and Ranchers Unions.
As for specific measures, the demonstrators demand from the Government “an increase in direct aid, flexibility in aid from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)” so as not to return a penny to Europe “and a hydraulic policy that really meets the needs of citizens and food producers.
Convened by the Union of Unions outside the large groups of farmers (UPA, Asaja or COAG), the farmers also ask for hydrological planning that makes the most of water; agricultural insurance that responds “for real” to the emergency situation; delay the application of the digital notebook and “compensate for the extra cost” that it entails for farms. In addition, they demand guarantees for the supply of water and food at “reasonable” prices to livestock, as well as preventing and compensating damage to agriculture and livestock “due to the overpopulation of wildlife.”
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