The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Rural Development, Elena Viboras, asked the Agricultural Policy Advisory Council for Community Affairs, which was held in Madrid, that the European Union increases the amounts allocated for citrus in the measures taken against the Russian veto.
Viboras emphasized the need for the EU to take additional measures, including the increase of the amounts allocated for citrus, because they are clearly insufficient and can only be assigned to the notifications submitted up until January 11. In this sense, Andalusia has only used 16% of the quota allocated to Spain.
The Minister of Agriculture said she had also requested additional measures for the fruits and vegetables covered by the aid, such as greater flexibility in assigned amounts, market monitoring, promotion and agile process in the case of price crises in some of the products.
Finally, the Minister indicated that it was essential to include peaches and nectarines in these additional measures, since the guidelines that included them came to an end on December 31. Andalusia also asks that the measures include two other products: the eggplant and zucchini.
The Agricultural Policy Advisory Council also addressed the future of the sugar sector in Andalusia. The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Rural Development explained that this future is determined by the hard adjustment that the restructuring program reform of 2006 will have in terms of acreage, number of factories, area and production, once it is finished. Viboras stressed that this adjustment was much higher in Andalusia than in the rest of Spain.
The Framework Agreement for the 2015/2016 to 2019/2020 campaigns is "an attempt to give stability to the sector once the quotas disappear at the end of the 2016/2017 campaign," said the Minister. However, the southern region has been reduced so much after the restructuring that it is very vulnerable to any change of balance. Therefore, she said, "there is a high risk that this sector in Andalusia could disappear."
Source: Granadahoy.com