How they are and what they ask young people to “stay” in agriculture

The need for generational relief in the field is a reality recognized by the institutions and, therefore, aid has been multiplied to favor the arrival of new sap in agriculture, young people who “settle” but demand less bureaucracy and quality services In the villages.

The Government’s challenge – with the support of the Autonomous Communities and, above all, with funds from the European Union (EU) – was to incorporate 20,000 young people into the 2020 horizon.

“Aids are giving, the truth is that yes, but it takes a lot, about two or three years, and you have to mobilize a lot of roles,” explains Julio César Gilabert, a farmer who has his farm in José Antonio, a hamlet of Jerez de la Frontera (Cádiz). It refers to the aid granted to young farmers who are established for the first time as owners of a farm and can reach a maximum of 70,000 euros; They are co-financed by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development and are part of the second pillar of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

The period to receive these aid can be extended up to five years, so, as he acknowledges, the help of the families is “fundamental” to be able to bring the business to fruition, to the point that it considers “almost impossible” to start in the activity agricultural without this support, which means having land or machinery.

In his case, he had always helped in family exploitation, in addition to working in construction and as a “day laborer” on behalf of others in other areas; Finally, he decided to “stay” in the field with just the right time: he became professional at 39. In addition to not exceeding 41 years, training is required – with criteria set by the autonomous community and that where appropriate are professional training courses – and present a business plan with the initial status of the operation and the detail of the planned actions For the entrepreneur.

The motivation is lacking, explains Gilabert, to get into this field, because the “field has to like it”: it is a very demanding job in schedules and obligations, and due to the low profitability it demands very good harvests to be able to obtain results.

 A cattle dealer that makes the group visible

This is what Lucia Velasco, a young Asturian farmer who has made of her way of life – as responsible for a exploitation of transhumant cows in Asturias – a claim of respect for traditions, land and rural environment. Awarded the Prize for Excellence in Innovation for Rural Women, Velasco has become a speaker that “as a woman and as a mother” requires that the people have the “comfort” necessary to develop a life project.

More training to “teach how to do the many procedures to be done” and people trained to be able to “have replacement” in situations such as pregnancy are other support requested. And, once young people have settled in the agricultural activity, they still need support, and they also receive it in the form of grants, from the institutions.

The AIDS

In the framework of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), two other grants can be added; the complementary payment for young people, which “seeks to ensure that the young people who join can consolidate their activity”, in the words of the president of the Spanish Agricultural Guarantee Fund (FEGA), Miguel Ángel Riesgo. The FEGA, the body responsible for managing these payments, had approved June 30 to allocate 51 million to this concept, which triples the figure of only two campaigns ago.

And secondly, young people can choose to be assigned “rights” of basic payment of the “national reserve”, the resource that the State has to guarantee equal treatment between farmers, since the basic payment is, today for today, the main income support for farmers.

For this concept, 2,800 young farmers were made in 2018 with these rights and received, on average, 4,350 euros in aid.

There are no magical fertilizers to make flourish the agricultural vocations that are needed so much in Spain as in Europe; but there are perceived efforts that begin to bear fruit with a trickle of new incorporations that seek to give reason to the popular proverb, who insists that “Whoever sows well, collects well.”