The field has prepared for this Sunday what is expected to be su largest demonstration after the pandemic, with a march in the center of Madrid to demandr “a shock plan” to deal with the high costs and low profitability of the sector, problems that have been aggravated by the war in Ukraine.
The agrarian organizations Asaja, COAG and UPA, the Spanish Hunting Federation, the breeders of fighting bulls, the agri-food cooperatives and the irrigators, toIn addition to the coalition that several of them form in the Rural Alliance, they have come together to claim the importance of the sector in the economic and social panorama of Spain and claim “a future for the countryside”.
The march will begin at 11:00 a.m. Plaza Emperador Carlos V, in front of the headquarters of the Ministry of Agriculture, and will go along Paseo de la Castellana to reach Plaza de San Juan de la Cruz, headquarters of the Ministry of Ecological Transition.
historical demonstration
The organizers believe that It is a historic event and they expect around 200,000 people to attend to claim viable agriculture and livestock as the economic engine of the rural environment and to express their complaints about the high cost of production, the high energy bill they bear, the lack of profitability and the scarcity of services in the field.
The demonstration will give continuity to the mobilizations that farmers and ranchers early 2020 to ask for fair prices in the field and that were paralyzed with the arrival of the pandemic until they resumed at the end of last year.
Since the march was called last January, the sector has seen how the problems for which it cries out for a solution have worsened as a result of the war in Ukraine, which has made the energy bill even more expensive and has left a part of the sector without some essential basic materials, such as cereals for animal feed.
The demonstration also comes after a week of strike in the transport of goods by the increase in fuel prices, something that is cutting the food supply chain even from the first link, preventing some milk producers from circulating their products.
The sector has also suffered these months a prolonged drought that has put at risk the campaign of some crops and before which the Government This week it has announced a package of fiscal, labor, financial and hydrological aid.
Faced with the crisis in the countryside and its claims, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPA) defends that work to solve them and that, just as it has launched this aid package for the drought, it has launched another series of initiatives to support the sector.
The Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, has mentioned this week as examples the project for economic recovery and transformation, known as Perte, which thus gave the green light to a public investment of 1,000 million until 2023; or the law of the chain, which prevents any link from selling below what it has paid to the previous link.