AVA-ASAJA regrets that fruits and vegetables continue to be forgotten
The Valencian Association of Farmers (AVA-ASAJA) regrets that the fruit and vegetable sector continues to forget Spanish agricultural policy, as it has been observed in the different meetings that the candidate for the presidency of the government, Pedro Sánchez, It is keeping up with political parties and social groups.
The president of AVA-ASAJA, Cristóbal Aguado, says that “no one who has met with Sánchez in recent days has taken into account the fruit and vegetable sector, despite leading the agricultural data in terms of production, export and job creation, and when fruit and vegetable producers are going through absolutely dramatic moments. ”
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, the value of the production of fruits and vegetables exceeds 14,000 million euros, contributing 47% of plant production and 29% of the production of the agricultural branch, which places it as the sector most important in the whole of Spanish agriculture. 25% of the UTAs used in the agricultural sector are dedicated to fruits and vegetables (more than 200,000) and to this leading direct employment must be added more than 100,000 indirect positions in handling, packaging and transport.
“For what has transpired in the media,” said Aguado, “these meetings have once again shown that continental agriculture receives the respect and treatment it deserves, while fruit and vegetable remains the most neglected, Cinderella’s Spanish and European agricultural policies ”.
AVA-ASAJA condemns this new ninguneo that is dragging on for decades and that is translating into a profitability crisis that only worsens in numerous crops, such as citrus fruits, stone fruits, watermelon and melon, among others, that In some of those cases it is causing the uprooting of plants and even their gradual disappearance from our fields.
Aguado affirms that “every government that enters does good to the previous one and to the tests I refer to it: Mediterranean agriculture is increasingly discriminated against in the successive reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) both in aid amounts and in market measures, it is the currency in trade agreements with third countries and is the victim of conflicts outside the sector such as the veto of the Russian market. What else does this sector have to suffer, which has given so much joy to this country, so that fruit and vegetables are taken seriously in the offices of Madrid and Brussels? ”
