There is a small correction to avoid the progressive human emptying of the rural territory. Enthusiastic and enterprising young people return to small towns who discover the advantages of living in a quiet environment where you can work like in the middle of a big city. The technological revolution is already having social and economic effects as important as those of the industrial revolution. But there are few who choose to settle in rural areas, although the trend is positive and constant.
On Saturday I was in a day of reflection in Alcarràs with the participation of farmers, ranchers, officials, mayors, deputies and academics to deal with the crisis affecting the primary sector. It was organized by the Rural Country association, chaired by Josep Maria Vila d'Abadal, former mayor of Vic. It is already known that a farmer satisfied with the progress of his business does not exist and will not exist. But he always had the autonomy to organize himself, bet on initiatives subject to variables beyond his control such as cold, heat, drought and other imponderables of nature. And the miserable prices they are forced to sell their products.
The farmer and the rancher today feel slighted by an Administration that applies approved laws without respecting or facilitating the mandatory participatory process in its elaboration. A constant in most of the interventions referred to the nucleus of technicians who, from offices in Barcelona, imposed their ideological criteria on those who have lived and sustained the land for generations.
The moral superiority of the technicians is unbearable, according to some speakers. The officials treat the farmers as if they were criminals. It makes no sense that three inspections have taken place in the fruit harvest that lasts just over two months. The officials and the mossos arrive, separating the owner, the workers and some neighbors to see if all the instructions are followed.
The mistrust is complete. Officials, not necessarily ministers or political officials, do not listen, but rather impose. They have the urban truth that they want to apply to a rural reality that they do not know.
The income from agriculture and livestock is falling due to the global crisis, but also because life is made impossible for those who cultivate land or have livestock with a useless and ineffective bureaucratic hostility.
There are few votes in the rural area, but there is a country that must be sustained and balanced. What is more important, the AP-7 or the 190,000 kilometers of rural roads that facilitate transit through the forests and are essential in case of fires in a piropaís, a happy expression in Martí Boada's intervention? There is a lack of energy, yes, but the products of the countryside that we consume are also energy. Caring for agriculture is of the highest priority national interest.
A new Housing Law is appropriate, taking into account the particularity of each municipality and of the added towns. Why can't vine shoots, branches and herbs be burned in the same field after pruning? Do we have to wait so long to combat the plagues of rabbits and wild boars that destroy crops? Farmers and ranchers are marginalized when they are socially indispensable. They are not predators and know how to take care of the land they have walked on and cultivated forever. A respect.
