The Union of Small Farmers and Ranchers (UPA) of the Region of Murcia assures that this year there has been “a general reduction in production” both dry and irrigated due to inclement weather (drought, high temperatures, hail or torrential rains ), but the high prices paid by consumers cannot be attributed to this situation but to “speculation”.
«Today the oil is not in the hands of the producers but in those of the mills and packers. These high prices are not being transformed into extraordinary income for farmers, who do not intervene in the final sale price to the public,” said Marcos Alarcón, general secretary.
As a consequence, it ensures that there is a deterioration in agricultural income that has been aggravated by the increase in production costs. To remedy this, from UPA they request that the regional government, in order to enforce the Food Chain Law, carry out studies of minimum production costs to avoid that farmers are forced to sign contracts with a “leonine clause” that they have to accept to do not leave the fruit on the tree. This leads them to implicitly confess when signing the contract that they are being paid prices above their production costs when in many cases this is not the case.
“That the law is complied with in that first link and farmers are not allowed to continue receiving prices below production costs,” insisted the general secretary of UPA.
This is how Alarcón explained it this Thursday, who speaks of “a bad year” for the countryside when taking stock of the first half of this 2023, marked by “the incidence of the weather”, which, in his opinion, puts the table “the urgency and need to adapt the agricultural insurance system” to face the losses caused by the weather.
Alarcón stressed that the aid received has been uneven. On the one hand, there is the central government, which “has made an unprecedented budgetary effort with million-dollar items, but insufficient”, while the Government of the Region “has not appeared”.
To define this “bad year” from UPA, they highlighted that it is expected to obtain 50% of the normal harvest of nuts such as almonds, which is at stake this weekend if the rains go more; 60-70% of the wine grapes are rainfed and 75% are irrigated; 30% of the normal regional level for olives; “a complicated campaign” of broccoli; tomato, “very affected by unfair competition from Morocco and the effects of the weather” and stone fruit, which registered the worst campaign in 10 years. In addition, 100% of the cereal was lost.
In the case of livestock production, UPA highlights the increase in “high production costs”, which are reflected in the increase in the cost of feed for animal feed and in energy costs. “As a consequence of the drought, the prices of straw, which have tripled, and cereal are exorbitant,” Alarcón stressed.
Also of the Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHE), which has not been detected in any farm in the Region, although it has appeared in deer from Moratalla and Caravaca. The economic consequences of EHE keep farmers in suspense, who have asked the Ministry for a meeting to address this situation and that this disease can be included in the official sanitation campaigns so that if there is an increase in costs or slaughter of some animals, farmers can be compensated for the rise in costs.
To this must be added the effects of the weather on watermelon and melon, whose production was affected by the hail, especially in Lorca, and which also suffered the impact of heat waves. In any case, they clarify that prices have nothing to do with this but with speculation.
“Those who have taken advantage are the supermarkets that are the ones who make August,” said Antonio Moreno, UPA Secretary of Agriculture and Water.
Government Formation
Regarding the formation of a new Government in the Region, from UPA they assure that with 1,200 affiliates they do not have the capacity to influence nor do their preferences have much weight, but they ask the new Executive either alone or in coalition or the one that comes out of a new electoral repetition, that it act with its own policies, sufficient budgets to make policies aimed at farmers and ranchers and that it not dedicate itself only to “criticizing what the Government of Spain does”.
In Agriculture they ask for a counselor who bets on “real dialogue” with agricultural organizations and more budget for agricultural insurance.
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