The needs are 36 million tons per year
The agricultural association ASAJA has sounded the alarm and lives up to the saying that misfortune never comes alone. According to the Director of International Relations, the Spanish grain harvest will be cut significantly this season and will remain at the 15.5 million tons mark, 21% less than last year’s figures.
Our country’s needs are 36 million tons per year, both for human and animal consumption (the pig herd is one of our main exports, but needs a lot of grain and oilseeds). A gap that Spain has so far compensated by importing maize from Ukraine -30% of what it takes to make feed, 17% of the wheat consumed or up to 60% of the sunflower, estimated at 500,000 tons.
The reasons for this production behavior are diverse, summarizes Ignacio López. On the one hand, the rise in the prices of energy, fertilizers or seeds; also of phytosanitary products (its lower use has led to more pests and diseases of winter crops), all of which refer to the war in Ukraine. This circumstance has minimized the expected effect of the exceptional opportunity to plant crops on fallow land, a measure approved by the EU at the initiative of Spain and which would benefit 600,000 hectares in our country.
“Eventually they won’t reach half, because the costs have cut a lot of producers.” The slump in numbers has also impacted heat and lack of rain, as well as damage attributable to wildlife, decimating crops and halting grain activity in many regions.
The rise in production costs has forced the EU to allow imports from third countries above the limits set so far. Also to launch aid packages aimed mainly at farmers, underpinned in the Spanish case by a private storage line of 7,000 tons of pork, 169 million in direct aid for dairy farmers and another 150 million for sheep, cattle, poultry or goats .
Source: La Verdad
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