"The European Commission does not tread the land that we tread, and legislating from Brussels is very easy," says Cristóbal Aguado. The president of the Valencian Association of Farmers (AVA-ASAJA) was once again harsh yesterday with the common agricultural policy (PAC) in a meeting held in Valencia on the future of the Valencian citrus industry.
He came directly from Brussels, where on Monday he participated in a Copa-Cogeca meeting, which brings together farmers and agricultural cooperatives from the EU, to present the program that prevents Huanglongbing (HLB), a plague that has no cure and that stands as "the most lethal disease of world citrus".
The EC will present a legislative proposal on genetic editing in agriculture on July 5, which according to the agrarian representative supposes a modulation in the discourse of the European Commission: "They have assumed that research on technological advances must be changed" , said. However, he insisted that "the EC demands are putting the particular situation of the farmer against the ropes", for which he asks, as he has already done on other occasions, more listening to the sector.
He assured that the Valencian farmers “ask me for civil disobedience in the new PAC. And it is very hard, because the aid here is purely testimonial”. AVA-ASAJA is critical of the new common agricultural policy, which came into force last January and to which they put many 'buts'. One of the last, the errors that have been denounced after finding many of the farmers benefited from European aid duplications in the income of these aids after reviewing the tax data of their income statements.
Another of the novelties of the new PAC that Valencian agriculture criticizes is the digital notebook of agricultural exploitation, which they perceive as a way to "throw them out" of the field and "make life impossible for them". In AVA-ASAJA they interpret it as a new obstacle, especially taking into account the aging of the sector, whose average age is 64 years.
It is not only AVA-ASAJA that is requesting more time for this new requirement, since La Unió Llauradora i Ramadera has also requested that its implementation be "progressive" starting with large farms and that it be done for small ones from the year 2028. They consider that it imposes more bureaucracy on the sector and makes it less competitive.
There is reluctance to the digitization that Europe is leading with its recommendation of complete adaptation in all the systems that are used by the Administration for its relationship with farmers and ranchers. “The digital notebook and the new requirement of the CAP will mean that Valencia, which is already the red lantern of land that is not cultivated, adds 30,000 more hectares. They are going to abandon many farmers, they are going to leave the fields lost. The environmental imbalance is going to be extraordinary”, stated Aguado.
The Minister of Agriculture, Isaura Navarro, has also requested an extension until 2025 for the implementation of the digital notebook for agricultural exploitation. In this context is framed the softer support for the criticisms made yesterday by Roger Llanes, acting regional secretary for Agriculture and rural development, who assured that there are debates in Europe that "we have wanted to open up for a long time, not only the suitability of a new CAP” and welcomed the fact that the EC pays attention to the detection of pests with new technologies, such as the aforementioned CRISPR. This scientific advance makes it possible to recognize the repetition of infections and is a new window on gene editing in agriculture.
The concerns in the field are not few, as Llanes also exposed, who presented some of the novelties of the Comprehensive Citrus Plan of the Valencian Community 2023-2030, presented in March and whose application is now in doubt due to the change of Government. Llanes explained that the objective is to try that "the reference regulations in Europe do not go against us, but that they accompany us", since that "would make us have a promising future, because we have advantages".
He was optimistic, although he warned of the changing trend in the citrus sector, with the last four campaigns very different from each other and marked by both the pandemic and the drought or the increase in energy costs. In 2009, Spain went from consuming 23 kg of oranges to 15.4 kg in 2021, while in Europe the change is less drastic: from 8.4 kg to 7.4 kg of consumption per person per year.
The reasons are various but these include less interest from the consumer, who consumes less fruit and vegetables and their commitment to exotic fruit (mango, avocado or kiwi) that the Valencian Community does not produce and which is now a competition. "If we could increase per capita consumption in the European market by just one kilo, the future would be more than assured," said Llanes. It seems that everything, or almost everything, related to the Valencian orange passes through Europe.
