Ginés Donaire I Jaén, (EFE).- The fighting bull farms have raised their voices to convey the “dramatic situation” their farms are experiencing as a result of the drought.
“It is something horrible, the animals have already eaten the little grass that there is in the field and we are forced to buy feed and fodder to feed the cattle,” María Jesús Gualda, president of the Lidia Livestock Association ( AGL).
A situation, Gualda points out, that extends to the entire national territory, with specific exceptions in the province of Salamanca. “Our farms are depleted, that is, as if we were already in August, and we even have to give the animals straw due to the high price of feed,” he underlines.
The association, which integrates 390 wild cattle farms throughout the country, estimates that the costs have doubled compared to a normal campaign due to the increase in food prices, energy prices and also the lack of water in many farms.
The situation is so distressing that, as Gualda explains, many farms are sending more small cattle (yearlings or utreras) to slaughterhouses for slaughter, sometimes prior to sale at popular bullfighting festivities.
The cross of production costs
Gualda, who has presided over the association since February 2021, claims aid from the administrations. “We are a sector that maintains an ecosystem of vital importance such as the pastures and that fixes population to the territory”, he indicates.
Although he acknowledges that aid was received during the pandemic and now the Government has also approved reductions in personal income tax, he understands that the situation of the farms requires a specific plan.
Gualda manages the “El Añadío” cattle farm, in Vilches (Jaén), in the heart of the Sierra Morena, with just over 300 cattle, in addition to running a rural tourism complex that he has built on the same farm.
Another of the fighting bull breeders, Javier Arauz de Robles, pronounces himself in similar terms: “The situation is critical. We went through a time of crisis in 2008, after the pandemic that has also done us a lot of damage and what no one expected is this brutal drought. We have never had a situation like this since we ran the cattle ”, he says.
Arauz de Robles, who manages a cattle farm in the foothills of the Sierra Morena, next to the Rumblar river, also demands urgent aid from the institutions: “It is a situation as serious as a pandemic because it is killing us, the prices of suppliers continue to rise and now a brutal agricultural and economic ruin is added ”.
In his opinion, production costs (food, diesel, electricity or transport) have increased by more than 40 percent, something that, he says, is already threatening the viability of many farms. EFE