The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Luis Planas, has criticized the PP and Vox for voting this Thursday against the amendment that would allow the current Food Information and Control Agency (AICA) to be strengthened to provide it with greater inspection capacity. and sanction to comply with the Law of the Chain, which regulates fair relations between the different links of production, from farmers and ranchers, manufacturers to distribution companies.
After the protests last winter, the Ministry sealed an agreement of 43 measures with two agricultural organizations, the Union of Small Farmers and Ranchers (UPA) and the Union of Unions, of which they took stock this Friday. Among them, converting the AICA into a State Food Information and Control Agency, with more resources and more inspection and sanction capacity.
But this transformation has not yet gone ahead, due to the rejection of PP and Vox in the Congress of Deputies, where the amendment to create that agency was voted against. “The joint vote of PP and Vox meant that it did not prosper. “We will try again in the Senate.” And if it does not go ahead, “in the course of 2025, we will reintroduce it in Congress,” Planas assured during a press conference. “They fill their mouths by saying that they defend farmers and ranchers and now that they have had an opportunity to approve an instrument, to support the weakest link, not only have they not supported it, but they have voted against it.”
Planas has taken stock of the spring agreement, which he considers “very satisfactory”, because “90% of the measures have been able to be put into practice”. For example, it has defended mirror clauses, so that agri-food imports meet the same production requirements as within the EU.
Along the same lines, Lorenzo Ramos, general secretary of UPA, has defended the 43 measures sealed in April, because this year prices are more positive, except in sectors such as the vineyard “where some type of restructuring will have to be done”, in sectors livestock affected by diseases, such as bluetongue, or olive oil where in a half-normal harvest, there is a speculative spiral. “We are going to continue working, but what was reported” at the beginning of the year, “has been achieved by 90% and has already been applied in 2024.” And, regarding the new mobilizations after the agreement with Mercosur, Ramos has assured that “our organization has always been in all the mobilizations to defend farmers and ranchers, no matter who governs” but “we have to be responsible. There’s no point in going out and then getting nothing.”
“The agreement was necessary and has borne fruit,” said the president of the Union of Unions, Luis Cortés, who has criticized the rejection of Vox and the PP to the reinforcement of the AICA. “It was not approved, we do not understand why they are against an agency that serves to prevent it from being sold at a loss. It is being sold at a loss, we see it in tomato concentrate, rice and the AICA is not responding.”
Cortés has also demanded measures to facilitate generational reinforcement and, on Mercosur, that the mirror clauses be met, in terms of phytosanitary products or meat quality. In addition, he has criticized the reduction in working hours. “Many farms are at the limit of profitability and that means an increase in salary costs when we are at the limit.” On the other hand, Lorenzo Ramos has pointed out that, on some occasions, “less work is being done than the hours that are being proposed. Working conditions are not a problem for us, but we have to get the resources to demand better conditions,” in terms of what producers charge “to pay without any problem.”
On Mercosur: “Spain is not France”
Planas has also defended the agreement with Mercosur. “It is a strategic project, where Spain and the EU have been committed for years, with a very important geopolitical component, on the presence of the EU in a part of the world that speaks Spanish and Portuguese,” defended Luis Planas. “The agreement has a translation period of six or seven months and from then on the EC will indicate the ratification mechanism.”
“We are a great agri-food country, a power and our vision cannot be defensive, but offensive, opening new markets, in pork, wine, oil,” he listed.
He has also recognized that “there are more sensitive aspects”, where “there are quotas, import limits, safeguard clauses and the possibility of establishing a fund of 1,000 million euros for possible compensation to affected sectors.” “It is not a black and white debate. It is a dynamic debate. The new American administration has clouds on the horizon regarding trade measures and we have to reach as many markets as possible. I am aware of the concern of farmers and ranchers and we are going to cooperate in whatever is necessary” but “Spain is not France, France’s problems are its own, so that no one makes a mistake,” he noted, regarding the rejection of that country. to the agreement.
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