Valladolid (EFE) to take concrete measures now.
The Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Rural Development, Gerardo Dueñas, chaired the Agrarian Council of Castilla y León this Thursday, in which the situation that the Community is going through due to the drought was addressed with the different representatives of the unions agrarian.
As reported by the Board in a statement, Dueñas has conveyed to the members of this collegiate body the intention of the regional Executive to grant direct aid to the sector, where dryland crops will be prioritized, to professionals and to those who have taken out insurance to their holdings.
The counselor has guaranteed that support for agricultural insurance will be increased and low-interest subsidized loans will be approved, with a one-year grace period, which will begin to be negotiated with the main financial institutions next week.
In this sense, the economic valuation of these direct aids, as well as the request for the declaration of the campaign as exceptional due to the effects produced by adverse weather phenomena will be addressed in a Governing Council.
Complaints to the Ministry
On the other hand, the Agrarian Council has decided to transfer a complaint to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food for the “unjustified discriminatory criteria” to the farmers of Castilla y León before the declaration of “medium condition” due to the drought instead of “condition high”.
For the members of this body, “it is not admissible that a cow in Cáceres receives twice as much help as one from Castilla y León”. For this reason, they have announced that they will send a letter in which they will expose the situation in the Community with the intention that “the Ministry modifies the criteria to be applied”.
The demands of the Takeover Bids: direct aid
At this meeting, the takeover bids have demanded that the Ministry implement a direct aid plan for the agricultural sectors to compensate for production losses. Specifically, that the Ministry complement the compensation that Agroseguro must pay to the farms up to 100 percent of the insured capital.
They have also demanded direct aid also for the livestock sector, to compensate farms for the increase in the cost of animal feed to which they are obliged due to the lack of grass and the increase in the cost of feed, straw and fodder, and once the aid has been published.
Other aid, in addition to direct aid, that organizations such as the UPA-Coag Alliance have brought to the meeting require the Ministry to join in supporting the liquidity of the holdings of professionals by subsidizing or exempting all the regional competition rates that are levied on the different procedures that must be complied with in the development of agricultural and livestock activities.
Likewise, they have also demanded an increase in the contribution of the Board to the financing of agricultural insurance, in such a way that the sum of the state and regional contributions allows reaching up to 70% of the premium subsidy from the next campaign or making the CAP more flexible, among many other measures that include increased investment and modernization of farms.
Disappointment among the Takeovers
Among the Takeover Bids, the president of the majority agrarian union in Castilla y León, Asaja, Donaciano Dujo, has left the meeting of the Agrarian Council this Thursday “with a string of vague promises” from the Minister of Agriculture, Gerardo Dueñas, to face to the drought and without any specific amount for that problem, nor amount for direct aid.
In a statement, the agrarian organization has criticized that the Ministry, which corresponds to Vox in the regional Executive, “has presented itself to the Agrarian Council, the highest representative body of the Castilla y León countryside, empty-handed and a string of vague promises, when the sector is going through a situation of maximum alert due to drought”, which requires “direct aid”.
Dujo has described as “disappointing that all they are willing to offer the sector are vague commitments that they will study it or that they will complement what the central Ministry gives, without specifying what global amount they reserve for it, if they will contribute at least what same as Madrid, or if they will contemplate the same sectors or some that have been forgotten. In short, nothing at all.”
The Takeover Bids calculate for their part that the losses due to drought in Castilla y León will exceed 2,000 million euros, given that the Community is moving “towards a harvest of less than 3 million tons, as catastrophic as that of 2017, and the cattle are not find pasture and forage is scarce and very expensive”, they have expressed from Asaja.
For this reason, the OPA Asaja has demanded that all administrations “provide aid for at least half of the losses, 1,000 million, distributed among the 40,000 professionals in agriculture and livestock in the Autonomous Community”. EFE
The entry Agriculture promises direct aid for the drought and the Takeover Bids demand concrete measures was first published in EFE Noticias.
