The organizations that represent peach and nectarine producers insist that the sector needs a support package to uproot trees with an additional budget to reduce the sector's oversupply, which has caused low prices at origin in recent campaigns.
According to the sector, the final content of the measures for the improvement of the sweet fruit sector that the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Food and Environment (Mapama) presented last Monday isn't good enough. However, the sector does admit that the activity must be restructured.
The president of Fepex's Stone Fruit Committee, Antonio Chavero, stated that the plan wasn't good enough because "it doesn't have any measures that could affect the next campaign, which starts in a month."
In addition, it doesn't include the fundamental measure that all organizations, including Fepex, requested, i.e. an aid plan to uproot 10,000 to 12,000 hectares, which could directly influence this season, he added.
"This campaign will be as disastrous as last year's campaign, unless there is a meteorological accident - which would also be a problem - that decreases the excess in supply," he said.
According to Chavero, "Fepex doesn't understand how all the varieties and regions are co-responsible of the oversupply when Catalonia and Aragon have doubled their production in the last ten years, while Andalusia has decreased it and Extremadura has maintained it."
Even though the president of the Stone Fruits sector of Spain's Agricultural Food Cooperatives, Javier Basols, generally endorses the sector's improvement plan, he also agrees they need to promote a plan to uproot plantations, with the previous authorization of Brussels, since it is the fastest way to adapt the volume to the demand.
In his opinion, the Plan elaborated by the Mapama "sends the message that there is an excess of supply and we must make an effort to limit it." In addition, "there is a lack of organization that harms the sector".
According to the technical director of Asaja, Jose Ugarrio, the ministry's proposal for the restructuring of the peach sector is fine, but it has to be improved, as it is missing a start-up plan.
Sources from the COAG, which in January was also in favor of additional aid to uproot peach trees, referred to the measures they defended after the draft of the peach plan was made public on February 2, which does not differ much from the final text presented this week.
They proposed the extension of the difficult to justify expense items to simplify the estimate of income in 2017, aid and moratoriums for loans contracted or the remission of Social Security and Property Tax (IBI) fees, among other measures.
Paula Sanchez, of the UPA, insisted that implementing short-term measures was urgent, given the imminence of the beginning of the campaign in the earliest areas, and that the country needed a measure to uproot trees at the national level.
"The aid to promote the uprooting of plantations is poorly thought out because they have only been articulated through the operational programs of the producer organizations and a large part of the producers won't be able to access them," the organization stated.
Jose Cabre, from the Union of Unions -which includes the Unió de Pagesos-, regretted that the Ministry of Agriculture "didn't finance or ask permission from Brussels to implement the aid to uproot plantations, and preferred to put pressure on producer organizations."
Source: efeagro.com