Lugo. The association of farmers Agromuralla, which groups together milk producers from the provinces of Lugo and A Coruña, demands a “revision” of the new regulations that will regulate the management of slurry on farms, because otherwise it could “lead to the closure 50% of small farms ”.
The president of Agromuralla, Roberto López, assures that the new decree on fertilization that the central government wants to approve supposes “a jug of cold water” for the Galician agricultural and livestock sector and warns of the dire consequences that it may have for farms, both milk like meat.
“If the Royal Decree is carried out on the first of January as it is written today, if the allegations that are presented are not accepted, we can almost assure that about half of the small farms in Galicia will close, because compliance with the regulations is unfeasible in many cases, ”added Roberto López.
According to his criteria, the application of the rules contemplated by the new regulations is “impossible” in Galicia “due to the orography”, but also because “it will be economically unaffordable for small farms”, which would have to make a very high expense ” to adapt their equipment to the new slurry application systems ”, he warned.
According to his calculations, it would force “to adapt or replace more than 20,000 cisterns that are currently operating in Galicia”, which spread it evenly on the surface, by others that inject it through pipes into the ground, which “would punish the 7,000 farms that are producing milk ”in the autonomous community.
In fact, the costs of this new regulation figure between “9,000 and 120,000 euros” of investment per operation.
For this reason, this agrarian group requests a modification of the regulations, “because dairy farms, which make use of slurry as fertilizer, cannot be treated the same as” pig farms, for example. that generate a lot of waste and have no “where to dump it, because they lack agricultural land”
Agromuralla requests a “direct aid” plan so that farmers have liquidity with which to meet expenses. P. we read
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