Mérida (EFE).- Dozens of farmers from the north of Cáceres have gathered this Thursday in front of the doors of the Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Development, Population and Territory, in Mérida, where they have thrown away 500 kilos of cherries to protest the ruin that lives the sector after the storms registered at the beginning of the harvest and claim direct aid.
The protest was called by La Unión de Extremadura and the Association of Valle del Jerte and Northern Regions, whose farmers have traveled to Mérida in several buses.
The regional leader of La Unión, Luis Cortés, has estimated the losses in the beer sector in the north of the province of Cáceres at almost 70 million euros and has recalled that the productions were not insured because the Agroseguro conditions are not viable for these small high mountain farmers.
Some 5,000 families affected
He has claimed 10 million direct aid for the sector, in which some 5,000 families live in the regions of Valle del Jerte, La Vera, Valle del Ambroz and Las Hurdes, and has criticized that the Government of Extremadura came out yesterday “with the joke of that it is going to give us loans that the banks do not give us because we are in debt to the top”.
Cortés has blamed the situation, in addition to the rain, on the Minister of Agriculture, Begoña Bernal, who “approved cherry insurance that does not cover risks”, as evidenced by the fact that a few years ago Some 3,800 cherry insurances were contracted in Cáceres and currently one hundred are being made, “simply because the insurance is not worth it.”
The agrarian leader has insisted that they do not want loans or the declaration of a catastrophic zone, which was already requested with the “Efraín” storm at the end of the year “and not a single euro of aid has arrived to those affected”, for which reason he He has considered “a government hoax.”
For Luis Cortés, the acting Executive of Extremadura has the capacity to approve direct aid to cherry growers, of the order of 4,000 euros per hectare, and that they be ratified by the Parliament of Extremadura as soon as it is constituted.
He has stressed that these farmers need direct aid, just as they are going to give cereal farmers and ranchers due to the drought, and improvements in insurance for successive years.
Cortés has indicated that, after this first act, if they do not receive a response to their demands, the protests and roadblocks will continue in the regions of Jerte, La Vera, Ambroz and Las Hurdes.
Some 300,000 lost wages
He recalled that 300,000 wages have been lost in Valle del Jerte in this cherry picking campaign, something that “nobody seems to care about”.
In this sense, José Luis Vicente, a farmer from La Vera, has said that in this region between 9 and 10 million kilos of cherries are harvested annually and “this year we have lost everything”, with which all the families that employed “have also been left without work.”
The mayor of the local entity of Azabal, the popular Isidro Alonso, has demanded help for small farmers who have been left without income after undertaking all the expenses and when they were about to harvest their harvest, in addition to remembering that in his region , that of Las Hurdes, between 6 or 7 million kilos of cherries are collected annually.
Emilio José Hernández Díaz, president of the Valle del Jerte and Northern Regions Association, has asked what response will be given “to thousands of farming families who have lost absolutely everything and have to move on.”
If there is no direct aid, he said, “people are going to have to leave the towns.”