SDG 12 | Responsible production and consumption
Extremadura and Andalusian crops are dry due to lack of rain in recent months
Senia, Bahía, Bomba, Guadiamar, Puntal or Thaibonnet. All of them are names of rice species cultivated in Spain and that reached 667,175 tons in more than 86,000 hectares of the national territory in 2021, according to the Agro-food Cooperatives of Spain. A cereal that grows, above all, in the Guadalquivir marshes (Andalusia) and also in Extremadura.
However, this 2022, Spanish paellas will have a hard time having Spanish rice grains. The hydrological drought that Spain is going through this first half of the year is noticeable in the crop fields.
The country’s reservoirs are at 48.7% of their total capacity, twenty percentage points below the average of the last decade. A lack of dammed water that is reflected in the swamps in the south of the peninsula and that already causes restrictions in Andalusian and Extremaduran towns.
Precisely, the dammed water of these two regions remains at 36% and 39%, being the lowest figure in the entire country together with the Region of Murcia. This problem leaves its mark on farmers who see how their lands remain fallow in 2022 due to lack of water.
In total, 43,000 hectares or what is the same 50% of the Spanish rice crops that are hanging by a thread due to the lack of liquid element for irrigation and this cereal is one of the least sustainable as it is a great consumer of water.
To produce a kilo of rice, 5,000 liters of water are necessary, the equivalent of the average monthly consumption of a household, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics. The lack of this resource and the restrictions on farmers, the sector points out, will mean that three quarters of the rice crops in the south of the country will remain unplanted.
This would mean that in 2022, with the data from last year, Extremadura and Andalusia only produced 90,265.5 tons of the more than 360,000 collected in the twelve months of 2021.
‘Ruin for farmers’
A gloomy picture to which are added some calculations that do not give the figures to reach the end of the month. “We are facing a very serious situation that threatens the income of producers,” warns the spokeswoman for Agriculture of the Popular Parliamentary Group of Extremadura, Mercedes Morán.
Farmers in the region speak in the same vein: “It is going to be a very difficult year both for the farmer and for the industry associated with rice. And that has a very important impact, ”says Félix Liviano, president of the Extremadura Rice Table.
The sector calls for solutions to alleviate, for example, the situation of water scarcity. Among their requests are financial aid, the agrarian organization UPA (Union of Small Farmers) estimates that tomato, corn and rice crops will generate income losses, only, for producers from Extremadura of 112 million euros. “There is a lot of wealth at stake,” reveals Liviano.
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