Oviedo (EFE).- Hundreds of professionals from the Asturian countryside with around four hundred tractors have collapsed this midday in the center of Oviedo to demand measures aimed at a rural environment that “cannot be allowed to die.”
The tractorada, convened by the agricultural and livestock organizations COAG, ASAJA, UCA, USAGA and URA, has flown in two columns that have started from different parts of the city to come together in the vicinity of Paseo de Los Álamos and has been supported by hundreds of people, including representatives of parties such as PP, Foro, Ciudadanos and Vox.
Field professionals have rang cowbells and tractor horns in protest against the abandonment of rural areas, the criminalization of the sector due to forest fires and the lack of control of wildlife.
During the march, the demonstrators carried banners with messages such as “We paint less than Barbón in Madrid”, “The countryside is not for sale, it defends itself”, “Wolf out of Lespre already” and “Politicians and bureaucracy are our misfortune”.
rural contract
The organizations drew up a “rural contract” a few weeks ago – already signed by PP, Foro, Ciudadanos, Vox, Suma Principado and SOS Occidente, but which PSOE, IU and Podemos have not signed – in which they request the exclusion of the wolf from List of Wild Species under Special Protection Regime, a “fair” system of compensation for damage to wildlife, compliance with the Food Chain Law that prevents the sale of production at a loss and the “blank” defense of the indigenous breeds.
“We do not want to be used politically, what we want is the defense of a sector that is dying and dying,” said Mercedes Cruzado from COAG during a cattle protest.
In statements to journalists, he has assured that the situation in the countryside is “ever worse” and has worsened in recent times due to the impact of the covid pandemic, the rise in production costs and the drought problem.
Faced with these problems, political leaders approve measures that “will make it impossible” to continue the activity as they are designed “from the cities,” he warned.
“Tough laws and very difficult to comply with”
From Asaja, its president, Ramón Artime, has lamented that the bureaucracy is “scorching” the sector, which has “very tough and very difficult to comply with” legislation.
“We are fed up with whoever legislates has never set foot in rural areas and does not know what a cow or a potato is,” he pointed out before criticizing the reduction in aid, around 20 to 30 percent, from the CAP.
Along the same lines, the general secretary of the UCA, José Ramón García Alba, has spoken, who has assured that this legislature has been “disastrous” for the rural environment, for which reason he has asked that, after the regional and municipal elections, the organizations policies have “field sensitivity”.
The agrarian organization URA has criticized, for its part, that the “rural contract” has not been signed by PSOE, Podemos and IU because the document has been supported by other political organizations that “are at the antipodes”.
In this sense, the regional coordinator of USAGA, Fernando Marrón, has pointed out that the socialists and “their government partners” do not want to sign a contract that is drawn up for the first time by all the organizations in the field. EFE