Dry land

All more ex­pen­sive

Apart from the huge losses, many rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the agri­cul­tural sec­tor warn that the fu­ture of many farms is also at risk. Vi­cente stresses that “al­though the pre­dom­i­nant com­pa­nies in our coun­try are fam­ily-owned, in many cases in­vest­ments have been made and so this cri­sis could cause more than one to close down.”

Yet the im­pact may also be felt by larger com­pa­nies. Re­cently, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the fruit sec­tor em­ploy­ers’ as­so­ci­a­tion, Afru­cat, met with the UGT trade union and an­nounced the pos­si­bil­ity of ini­ti­at­ing wide­spread tem­po­rary lay-offs due to the dras­tic drop in fruit pro­duc­tion. Cata­lan em­ploy­ers es­ti­mate that the drought could af­fect be­tween 10,000 and 15,000 work­ers out of the 40,000 jobs that the sec­tor cur­rently gen­er­ates. Afru­cat’s gen­eral man­ager, Manel Simon, also said that tem­po­rary lay-offs will not be enough and he ar­gues that the sec­tor needs aid, while the UGT de­manded a “shock plan to save trees and jobs”.

The drama ex­pe­ri­enced in the coun­try­side will in­evitably end up af­fect­ing us all. Cat­alo­nia im­ports about 60% of the food it con­sumes, and of the re­main­ing 40%, more than half (57%) comes from the re­gion of Lleida alone. Sergi Balué, from the sweet fruit sec­tor of the Young Farm­ers and Ranch­ers of Cat­alo­nia, is very clear: “The im­pact of the drought will be coun­try­wide: it may end up chang­ing the struc­ture of how we do things.”

First of all, it will have an im­pact in the coun­try­side, with a rise in un­em­ploy­ment and a dras­tic re­duc­tion in ex­ports, but it will also end up hav­ing an im­pact on the con­sumer, with prices likely to rise sig­nif­i­cantly.

Martí Costal, head of JARC’s water sec­tor, sums up the sce­nario: “If we have to im­port more food, we will have to pay a price. On the one hand, we will lose food sov­er­eignty and will have to de­pend more on other coun­tries. And, in ad­di­tion, it will have an im­pact on the en­vi­ron­ment, with a larger CO2 foot­print and no guar­an­tees we will be able to com­ply with EU en­vi­ron­men­tal, labour and health reg­u­la­tions.”

So far, the prices of legumes, veg­eta­bles, tu­bers, olives and sweet fruit have al­ready risen by more than 16% and they will likely con­tinue to rise. Faced with this sce­nario, the farm­ers’ rep­re­sen­ta­tives call for the need to pri­ori­tise the pri­mary sec­tor when mak­ing de­ci­sions about how to deal with the lack of water: “We can do with­out many things, but not food and drink. Agri­cul­ture and live­stock are es­sen­tial for ob­tain­ing qual­ity local food,” warns Costal, who adds that it will be nec­es­sary to pri­ori­tise pro­duc­tion, be­cause it is of pri­mary ne­ces­sity, al­though other as­pects must also be taken into ac­count, such as guar­an­tee­ing good main­te­nance of the land, the eco­nomic fab­ric, the man­age­ment of the en­vi­ron­ment and avoid­ing fires.

“They have aban­doned us”

Farm­ers have been de­mand­ing mea­sures from the au­thor­i­ties for months, and they com­plain about the slow­ness and in­suf­fi­ciency of those mea­sures that have been taken so far.

“The au­thor­i­ties have not re­acted. The aid they have an­nounced is only for cer­tain sec­tors, when in re­al­ity we are fac­ing a cri­sis across the board, af­fect­ing every­one from bee­keep­ers – who have har­vested 40% less honey than last year – to rice farm­ers – who will get 50% less rice this year. All this will end up hav­ing a di­rect im­pact on the con­sumer,” warns Costal.

The JARC of­fi­cial also de­mands that guar­an­tees be pro­vided to farm­ers: “The au­thor­i­ties pro­vide no se­cu­rity to peo­ple, in the sense of guar­an­tee­ing that they will not let them down. In the case of fruit farm­ers, for ex­am­ple, they are wait­ing to hear whether to sac­ri­fice the fruit har­vest and so save the trees, with all that en­tails. Peo­ple are very dis­tressed, but the au­thor­i­ties say noth­ing. They have aban­doned us.”

The farm­ers do not know what water they will have avail­able. In April, for the first time in its 161-year his­tory, the Urgell canal, which sup­plies 120,000 peo­ple with water and ir­ri­gates 70,000 hectares of farm­land, was closed. Since then, the only water al­lowed to cir­cu­late is to sup­ply the mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties and to pre­vent fruit trees from dying. This has led anx­ious farm­ers to re­sort to des­per­ate means, in­clud­ing open­ing new wells or pick­ing fruit or har­vest­ing ce­re­als early. The rest pray that the rain fore­cast by me­te­o­rol­o­gists will save their har­vests.

One of the main com­plaints of agri­cul­tural or­gan­i­sa­tions is a lack of ad­e­quate plan­ning, es­pe­cially in terms of water man­age­ment. This has led to such ac­tions as a protest march last month of around 40 trac­tors and 200 peo­ple from Urgell and other areas of La Plana to Lleida, or an­other from Batea (Terra Alta) and the coun­ties of Ter­res de l’Ebre that saw farm­ers gather in front of the head­quar­ters of the Ebro Hy­dro­graphic Con­fed­er­a­tion (CHE) in Zaragoza.

Yet farmer’s union head Vi­cente dif­fer­en­ti­ates be­tween the man­age­ment of the in­ter­nal river basins, in the hands of the Cata­lan au­thor­i­ties, and those of the River Ebre, which is under the man­age­ment of the CHE. “The Ebre has not been man­aged cor­rectly. We have been ask­ing for fig­ures since Oc­to­ber. There is not much trans­parency,” he com­plains.

The unions are de­mand­ing tougher and more ur­gent mea­sures, es­pe­cially from Spain’s state gov­ern­ment. In Vi­cente’s opin­ion, the state aid an­nounced so far has merely “dis­ap­pointed” farm­ers. “In ad­di­tion, the aid mea­sures were an­nounced for the whole state, mainly for the Guadalquivir and Gua­di­ana areas, and not for Cat­alo­nia specif­i­cally. Apart from that, they are clearly in­suf­fi­cient, since they fore­see 250 mil­lion euros in aid that must be dis­trib­uted through­out the state and which, there­fore, will have a very lim­ited im­pact on cer­tain sec­tors and re­gions, such as that of Cat­alo­nia,” he adds.

A com­pli­cated fu­ture

In fact, the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the dif­fer­ent agri­cul­tural unions all com­plain that just about noth­ing has been done by the au­thor­i­ties since 2008, when the last major drought was ex­pe­ri­enced.

“We should have been work­ing on al­ter­na­tives years ago so that we don’t have to de­pend on look­ing to the sky. We just haven’t adapted,” says Costal. At that time, it fi­nally rained a lot in late spring but this year the fore­casts are not so good, and both the state and Cata­lan me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal agen­cies, Aemet and Me­teo­cat, say that they do not ex­pect enough rain this year for the reser­voirs to re­cover so that we can leave the emer­gency sit­u­a­tion be­hind.

Nean­while, JARC has made a se­ries of pro­pos­als aimed at help­ing the agri­cul­tural sec­tor adapt to the new re­al­ity of more fre­quent and per­sis­tent droughts that the cli­ma­tol­o­gists have been an­nounc­ing for some time. Among these pro­pos­als is the im­prove­ment of in­for­ma­tion mech­a­nisms. Sergi Balué, head of JARC’s sweet fruit sec­tor, calls for “im­prov­ing in­for­ma­tion on water re­serves in order to be able to make the right de­ci­sions”. In fact, fruit pro­duc­ers cur­rently find them­selves in a dif­fi­cult dilemma: ei­ther they have to throw away the fruit in order to en­sure the sur­vival of the trees, or they de­cide to go ahead and risk their trees dying.

“There’s only enough water to ir­ri­gate once more from the Urgell canal. If we can’t water them, then the sur­vival of the trees will be dif­fi­cult. And on top of that it will be very dif­fi­cult that the trees will be able to bear fruit next year,” says Balué.

JARC says it has sent a se­ries of pro­pos­als to the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment call­ing for such mea­sures as a more eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of water, ac­ti­vat­ing a line of sub­sidised loans for pro­duc­ers from the Cata­lan In­sti­tute of Fi­nance, di­rect aid for losses, and analysing the spe­cific ap­pli­ca­tion re­quire­ments for each sec­tor, giv­ing pri­or­ity to the most ur­gent de­pend­ing on their sit­u­a­tion.

Mean­while, the Union of Farm­ers has also made sim­i­lar pro­pos­als, and in a re­cent meet­ing it held with the Sec­re­tary Gen­eral of Spain’s Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture at the sub-del­e­ga­tion of the State Gov­ern­ment in Lleida, the union called for the com­bi­na­tion of di­rect aid and for more flex­i­bil­ity for farm­ers af­fected by the drought in the reg­u­la­tions for ap­ply­ing for di­rect aid of the Com­mon Agri­cul­tural Pol­icy and rural de­vel­op­ment under the Eu­ro­pean Re­gional De­vel­op­ment Fund (ERDF).

“There’s a lack of de­sali­na­tion plants, so as to in­crease the vol­ume of re­gen­er­ated water, as well as aid so that farm­ers can in­vest in more ef­fi­cient ir­ri­ga­tion sys­tems as well as anti-leak­age sys­tems on farms. The mod­erni­sa­tion of ir­ri­ga­tion has been post­poned for far too long, and more money needs to be in­vested in the re­search and tech­nolo­gies for mak­ing water re­sources more ef­fi­cient,” con­cludes the JARC of­fi­cial.