Fruit Farmers Demand Improved Agricultural Insurance Policies to Cover Production Costs

“The green sea of Aitona that the fruit fields give us.” Image by Federico Arquillos from Lérida.

Representatives of the ASAJA agricultural organizations in the provinces that make up the Ebro Valley have demanded that it be guaranteed that agricultural insurance policies cover farmers’ production costs when their farms are affected by inclement weather.

This claim arises from the sharing of the problems that the fruit sector in this area is going through. and that was revealed in the last meeting between ASAJA technicians and farmers last July in Zaragoza.

The secretary general of ARAG-ASAJA, Igor Fonseca, recalled that in the face of increasingly frequent adverse weather events such as hail, torrential rains or extreme heat, “agricultural insurance is more necessary than ever for all agricultural sectors and, especially in the fruit sector. But it is necessary to work to improve their conditions so that they respond to the needs and compensations of farmers.

In this sense, ASAJA demands that agricultural insurance cover the entire harvest in the 2024 campaign. A demand that, as the president of ASAJA Lérida has recalled, Pere Roque, is far from being a reality. «Insurers only allow you to take out a frost insurance policy for only 50% of the harvest until the month of February. It is as if an individual were only allowed to insure half of his house,” he points out, “behind the large insurance companies there are foreign investment funds that only seek the profitability of their product, so the big losers are the farmers.”

This is why ASAJA demands a firmer and more involved position from the Ministry of Agriculture with insurance companies. since the scales of the policies are far below production costs, violating the Food Chain Law.

The representatives of ASAJA agreed that “farmers do not want subsidies but solutions” for a fruit sector that in 2022 lost the international market due to the strong frosts that reduced its production.

“Our farmers are concerned about the functionality of agricultural insurance on their farms,” warns Luis Miguel Serrano, general secretary of UAGN, “we feel defenseless in the face of inclement weather and our only weapon is insurance, but we see that, year After years, that weapon is falling apart. We ask the Ministry, ENESA and Agroseguro to listen to the voice of fruit growers in order to continue making agricultural insurance an essential tool.

Claims

Given the complicated situation that thousands of fruit farmers in the Ebro Valley area are going through, ASAJA has been demanding in recent years a series of measures to alleviate the difficulties of the sector. Among them stand out:

The possibility of configuring insurance that can be affordable for the farmer with coverage that adapts to the majority of fruit farms, who can choose deductibles and modalities for the damages that concern them most. For example, they can separate the risk of frost from the lack of fruit set, choosing franchises that allow differences if the lack of production is due to frost and not due to other phenomena.
The risk of frost may affect some species more than others. For this reason, ASAJA demands that the policy be able to choose whether the risk of frost is per species or per plot. That is, being able to make two policies with different species, equating subsidies.
A weather incident can affect farms for years. For this reason, the agricultural organization proposes that the minimum period be increased to 10 years prior to the incident in order to calculate the insured production.
With young plantations, the problem persists of not having sufficient history to determine their production, thus compromising their viability when an incident occurs.
ASAJA proposes that the same expert carry out all the appraisals on a farm and that the last one not be carried out in the middle of the harvest.
The destination of fruit damaged by hail is the second-hand or spoiled markets, where the remuneration is less than the cost of production. Therefore, it is advisable to quantify insurance where only damaged and healthy fruit can be selected.