Five former Ministers of Agriculture of the Catalan governments between 1992 and 2010, from CiU and PSC, defended this Thursday in a meeting with the media a country pact on water, food and energy, the modernization of irrigation and another with distribution for guarantee fair prices.
Francesc Xavier Marimon (Councillor for Agriculture from 1992 to 1999), Josep Grau (Councillor for Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, from 1999 to 2003), Antoni Siurana (Councillor for Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries from 2003 to 2006), Jordi William Carnes ( 2006-2007), Joaquim Llena (counselor for Agriculture, Food and Rural Action from 2007 to 2010) have participated in a meeting organized by the opinion group Compromesos amb el Futur de Lleida which promotes the ICG Foundation to analyze the protests of farmers from all of Europe Teresa Jordá, Meritxell Serret and Josep Pelegrí did not attend due to schedule incompatibility. Jordi Ciuraneta, councilor from 2016 to 2017, arrived late to the meeting with the media.
The five have acknowledged that they could have done better “because we learn from time.” Knowing the difficulties of the profession of farmer and rancher, which is very close to some of them - Grau and Marimon were and Marimon's son is - they agree on the lack of dialogue between the rural and urban world and also between the administrations in addition to the need to reduce the bureaucracy that stifles producers.
They all recognize that during their time as councilor they did not believe in the possibility of generating changes in the many demands of the Common Agricultural Policy that could have been demanded.
“We believed too much that the entire value chain was untouchable by competition courts and many things like that and we should have insisted more on Europe, which was moving towards a path. The act of intelligence that was the Common Agricultural Policy has become an unbearable regulatory framework for farmers,” stated Llena. He is convinced that the three legs of our sector, food, water and energy, would have been decisively needed.
“All my support for the sector, farmers and ranchers have managed to focus attention”, he has asked farmers and ranchers not to enter into dynamics of confronting different types of agriculture. “Proximity, kilometer zero agriculture is possible, but it is necessary, so that we can all eat, an agriculture of large productions. The worst thing they can do is enter into this contradiction of beautiful agriculture and polluting agriculture. If they do this, they will be wrong,” he stated.
For Francesc Xavier Marimon it is a historic opportunity to change taxation, bureaucracy and the use of water. “Administrations - he stated - must begin to make commitments. We already know that reducing bureaucracy is complicated, but at that moment I understand that a firm commitment must be made.
In his self-criticism, Josep Grau has considered it an important error of the Generalitat administrations of his time, of other communities and of the ministries to think that nothing could be done because a certain norm was mandated by Europe. “We have a lot of parliamentarians, Catalan and Spanish MEPs. In Europe there are councils of ministers in which the Spanish minister sits with his team. We have not stood up to so many regulations for which today the farmer cries.”
He has also said that the modernization of some irrigation systems could have come sooner. In reference to the Canal d'Urgell, he insisted that when he proposed it, 20 years ago, the irrigators did not decide: “When we have wanted to modernize many times we have come across the same community of irrigators and with irrigators who were not psychologically ready at that moment, as they are now out of necessity. “Twenty years ago we gave them the opportunity to modernize some of us sitting at the table and they didn't come out. And today, out of necessity, it must be done,” he added.
He has also insisted on the lack of understanding between the urban and rural world and has given as an example a photo he took last summer in a town in the Pyrenees in which the City Council explained to visitors that there were livestock and farmers and ranchers working and that if they couldn't stand it they were in the “wrong place.”
Jordi William Carnes, also former first deputy mayor of Barcelona, believes that the importance of the agri-food industry has not been sufficiently explained and not enough emphasis has been placed on the importance of dialogue between the rural world and the urban world. He considers that there is a “goodist” vision based on the decrease in certain activities while, on the other hand, Europe is proposing a certain food self-sufficiency.
“We cannot,” he says, “make the look at the territory a weekend, vacation look. “It must be a view of protecting the territory, yes, but who is the best person to take care of this territory, the technician or the person who lives and loves that territory because life matters to him?” he asks rhetorically.
I always make the irony that we should create a permanent meeting space in the Panadella that would serve to periodically understand the rural world and the urban world," he concluded.
Antoni Siurana, also former mayor of Lleida, has insisted that the objective is not to go against Europe considering that a common European agricultural policy is absolutely necessary. "The point is," he stressed, "that this does not have to involve the territory giving up managing its own resources. “And here we have that obligation to look for ways to change the generation and modernize our irrigation, to look for ways to allow the interconnection of the Noguera Pallaresa with the Segre, to prevent the Segre from entering into a peri-urban administration such as that of the Llobregat and, therefore, with a mess like a cathedral.” “We have the obligation to have permanent dialogue,” he stressed.
At the meeting they confirmed that the sector has undergone a significant transformation in recent decades and that it has had to make a great effort to adapt to these changes such as modernization, diversification of production, globalization and growing competition. the new regulations on the use of phytosanitary products, the concentration of production with fewer and larger farms, and the loss of weight of the sector in the economy as a whole due to the disappearance of farms and lack of generational change.
