CASTELLO. The aid for the field begins to be processed… but not for the entire field. The Council of Ministers approved last Tuesday the authorization to the line of exceptional grants announced by the Government so that the farmers cope with the rise in the price of fertilizers. It is a game for the entire national territory but they will not be able to access a large majority of farmers from Castellónas reported by industry associations.
The line made available by the Ministry of Agriculture, which was already included in the Ukrainian war decree of December 27, amounts to a total of €300 million and plans to reach 250,000 farmers. But the criteria initially set by the department that runs Luis Planasand which have not been modified for the moment, leave out more than two out of three farmers in the province of Castellón.
The December decree establishes that the beneficiaries of the aid will be the people or companies that own agricultural holdings that have accessed the subsidies of the Common Agricultural Policy (PAC) of the European Union. However, the central Executive included a section that, added to the initial requirement, in practice supposes the exclusion of a large part of the farmersespecially those with few fields or small plots of land.
Specifically, the article in question sets a maximum aid for each cultivated hectare, taking into account whether it is sdry surface -22 euros per hectare- or irrigated land -55 euros per hectare-. The problem, according to different farmers’ organizations, is the condition that it establishes right after: “Aid will not be granted when the amount to be received is less than 200 euros“.
In this way, those farmers who would receive a reduced aid for having less land under cultivation will be left out of the possibility of access to the call. In this sense, the minimum standard would directly affect those who exploit less than 3.64 hectares of irrigated land or 9 hectares of rainfed landbecause they would not receive a single euro despite the rise in costs that they have had to face in recent months.
Likewise, the Ministry has also set a cap on aid per farmer or company, which may only receive subsidies for up to a maximum of 300 hectares. Or what is the same: up to 16,500 euros in the case of irrigated land or 6,600 in dry land. And always “prioritizing the irrigated area”, according to the same decree. To count the hectares, “permanent crops and arable land, excluding fallow land and temporary pastures” will be taken into account.
The requirement of having received the PAC and the minimum aid established mean that, according to La Unió and AVA-Asaja, 70% of Valencian farmers are left directly without the possibility of access by the type of parcels of the Valencian Community, and especially of Castellón, where they predict that the holders excluded from the subsidies will be even more.
“We need a non-discriminatory measure”
“The required conditions limit the access of Valencian farmers and ranchers”, they explain in the farmers’ association The Union, from where they remember that almost half of the farmers of the Valencian Community do not receive the CAP. “Producers and vegetables that will fall from the list of beneficiaries,” warn the organization. And to them will be added others affected by the minimum required land: “Taking into account the large existing smallholdings in the Valencian countryside, another important percentage will be left out.”
To get an idea, fertilizers account for 8% of the production factors in the agricultural sector and its average price has increased by 80% between September 2021 and September 2022. For this reason, from La Unió they have claimed that All farms that have been forced to buy fertilizer to maintain productivity have access to aid to offset the increase in fertilization prices.
“If all farmers have suffered from the current rise in fertilizer prices, it is necessary a non-discriminatory measure that it be articulated for the entire primary sector with guarantees and speed, and that some farms are not excluded due to administrative criteria”, they insist from La Unió, maintaining a position that they already advanced when the December decree was made public and that this Tuesday materialized in the authorization for the granting of 300 million euros.
In the Valencian Association of Farmers (AVA-Asaja) They do not hide their discontent either: “The vast majority of Valencian farmers are excluded due to two requirements that do not fit the reality of the sector.” Regarding the minimum hectares to access the subsidy, they make it clear that they are “excessively large dimensions for the predominant smallholding in Valencian agriculture.”
The president of AVA-Asaja, Christopher Aguado, assured that if the Government “consulted the autonomous communities and these the real protagonists, in this case the Valencian farmers and ranchers, the regulations would be made in a more accurate way to really help solve the problems.” For this reason, he demanded that the aid “be extended to all Valencian farmers because they all suffer from the escalation of fertilizers and other production costs.”
Likewise, in the chapter on energy, he recalled the need to approve a special price for agricultural kilowatts, allow indefinitely at least two changes in contracted power per year and remove the ‘gas cap’ for agriculture. Finally, I asked for a general reduction of modules for the next income statement.
