2023-04-29 06:30:25
The Minister for Climate Action, Agriculture and Food, Teresa Jordà, defended yesterday that the Government supplement the compensation to farmers who have lost production due to the drought: “We must cover what the insurance company does not cover”.
“The cereal is lost, now we are working on how we can help”, he lamented in an interview with TV3, in which he refused to specify any figure.
He explained that there are “interesting results” in the search for more resistant agricultural varieties, in which he said that the Generalitat has been working for some time because climate change, literally, does not forgive.
Asked if she defends restrictions on tourist activity, she stressed that reacting to the drought “is everyone’s shared responsibility” and trusted that the hoteliers would promote measures.
Jordà reproached the Ebro Hydrographic Confederation (CHE) for not having “done anything before” and that its position at the end of 2022 was, in his words, that God will provide, so he demanded planning and has said that she would have pushed restrictions to avoid severe measures today.
The minister assured that the Generalitat is open “to everything” to agree with the central government on the modernization of the Urgell canal (Lleida).
“It is of general interest, this agreement that we are proposing is an idea, there could be 50,000, we are open to everything, whatever it takes”, he affirmed, and seconded by the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, in demand from the Spanish executive to finance 40% of the project.
On Wednesday, Aragonès calculated the necessary investment at a minimum cost – in the words of the president – of 1.2 billion euros and demanded a shared road map.
Jordà lamented that “it is very difficult to modernize, because this is worth a lot of money when you already water”, referring to the delay in the infrastructure.
For its part, the European Commission plans to “examine the impact” of the drought on producers in Spain “urgently” to decide whether to grant the aid requested by the Spanish Government, assured the European Commissioner for Agriculture, Janusz Wojciechowski. “We will analyze the situation urgently”, explained the commissioner at the end of a Council of Ministers of Agriculture in which Spain asked Brussels again for aid to alleviate the impact of the drought in the country.
The commissioner admitted that a section of the crisis reserve could be used, but specified that, before considering the activation of this measure, it is necessary to analyze “the figures of the specific damage, the impact of the losses”. In the case of the crisis reserve, he recalled that the activation of this instrument can be blocked with a qualified majority of Member States, so he considered it important to get the greatest possible support for this proposal. “We will study the issue so that things can proceed as smoothly as possible,” he added.
The commissioner acknowledged that, “unfortunately, the drought affects many farmers and countries”, recalling that last year alone the corn harvest in the EU decreased by 20% due to the lack of water and adding that this year could also have a significant impact. “We must act effectively to try to help farmers,” he said.
The General Secretary of Agriculture and Food of Spain, Fernando Miranda, who attended the Council in Luxembourg, requested the use of the crisis reserve fund of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to deal with the severe drought in the country He also asked for authorization to use unexecuted European rural development funds to enable direct aid to farmers and ranchers.
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