More than 6,000 farmers and ranchers, including a large group from the Region of Murcia, gathered in the protest before the ministers of the European Union (EU) meeting in Córdoba to demand a change in agricultural policy that guarantees the food system and a professionalized model of agriculture.
“Thousands of farmers and ranchers from all over Spain have demonstrated to transfer the uncertainty that the sector is experiencing, mainly due to the policies that are being developed in the European Union, trade agreements with third countries without taking into account the mirror clauses established, the regulatory pressure to which the agricultural sector is being subjected, sometimes with surreal measures of dubious efficacy, but which, nevertheless, put farmers and ranchers on the ropes to be able to carry out their work”, denounced the president of COAG in Córdoba in the Region, José Manuel Marín. “We ask for a change of course in European agricultural policy, where food is a priority and strategic and where food sovereignty for citizens is guaranteed,” he added.
Murcian producers from the Region’s Union of Small Farmers (UPA) demonstrated in the Andalusian city with COAG associates, denouncing that farm prices do not respond to product shortages but to speculation, and SOS Rural and from Asaja.
The general secretary of COAG at the national level, Miguel Padilla, stressed that the sector is not “against Europe”, but “of the policies that are made in Europe with respect to agricultural activity”. And he denounced the “suffocation” that producers have as a result of the “thousands and thousands of regulations” of the European Union. “We are not criminals, we are food producers.”
According to the agrarian organizations, the concentration responds to “the defenseless situation experienced by the agricultural sector, threatened by EU policies and the growing unfair competition from third countries and seriously affected by the increase in production costs, the drought and the lack of profitability of the farms”, for which they demand “solutions, coherent policies on climate change, food safety and protection of the national and European productive fabric”. The Spanish countryside demands “equal treatment for European productions and those from third countries” and they consider it “fundamental to intensify border controls to guarantee the entry of food produced under the same phytosanitary, labor and quality requirements to which farmers are obliged. European producers.
Asaja, COAG, UPA and the Agri-Food Cooperatives demand from the EU Ministers of Agriculture “a shift in agricultural policies and the consideration of food as a matter of the highest priority”, for which “it is essential to protect the productive fabric”.
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