“We cannot give up our efforts, but this is unbearable,” said Cristóbal Aguado, president of the Valencian Farmers Association (Ava-Asaja), recently. This is being a particularly demanding year in Valencian agriculture, which in February joined the national protests of the sector, but which already carried its own agenda of requests that guarantee environmental sustainability, but also economic sustainability.
Last year, this association quantified losses in the Valencian Community worth 400 million euros, 170 of which were due to climate change alone. And this is not the only problem: pests, competition from third countries, the regulations imposed by Europe hammer the sector, all agricultural associations agree. “We see it in rice, with warehouses full due to price competition, we are seeing it in transparent labeling... We cannot continue that line even one more day. We need more agrarian policies to be made because we have a lot at stake,” laments Carles Peris, general secretary of La Unió Llauradora i Ramadera, the other majority entity in the Valencian Community.
The Valencian agri-food sector represents around 11% of the gross value added of the Valencian economy and 13% of employment in the region. The production of fruits and vegetables has an important foreign market, but farmers repeat, over and over again, that they lack generational replacement and a European regulatory framework that does not complicate their daily tasks.
In 2023 there was a loss of cultivated area in the Valencian Community of almost 2,000 hectares compared to 2022, which raises the figure to more than 16,000 hectares if the last four years are added, right from the start date of the pandemic. “There are no young people in the countryside, we do not have professional workers, one in five hanegadas is abandoned and if more measures are applied, it will get worse,” predicts Aguado.
Citrus and fruit trees are the crops that occupy the most surface area in the Valencian territory, accounting between the two groups for practically half of the total crop land (49.4%), but of the former, 6,199 hectares have stopped being cultivated. . For these, the agricultural associations are asking for more aid, for example for their promotion to consumption, but in the last year the elimination of the PGI promotion, with no allocation in the Valencian budgets, has not yet had a response.
Added to this is climate change and a complex scenario after the worst hydrological year in more than three decades. All in all, the sector explains that "although we are the trench in the face of climate change, we have no margin," says José Vicente Andreu, president of Asaja-Alicante.
In the southern regions, the latest hailstorms and pests such as pulvinaria have damaged the lemon harvest, a crop for which they are also asking for help to prevent the "serious crisis" that they are going through, and which is pushing hundreds of farmers in Alicante abandonment due to not being able to give them a commercial outlet, intensifies. In 2023 there was a national record of accidents registered in agricultural insurance in this province, especially due to serious weather changes.
In short, Europe's garden asks for a plan B to save itself and demands it from Europe, a demand in which it finds the complicity of the Consell. The Minister of Agriculture, José Luis Aguirre, understands that professionals “feel suffocated by extremely demanding regulations and enormous bureaucracy.” However, the field also demands involvement from local administrations.
The Unió disgraces the Generalitat Valenciana that there is no aid plan and assures that "it is disappointing that the administration closest to you does not give you an answer." Meanwhile, Agriculture maintains its critical tone with the central government, demanding that it ask Brussels to activate the CAP crisis reserve funds, in order to help all agricultural and livestock sectors, "without any exception."
