The Spanish countryside demonstrates in Madrid and asks the Government for an aid plan

Madrid, 20 Mar Tens of thousands of farmers and ranchers demonstrated this Sunday in Madrid to protest the high fuel costs, the low prices at which they are forced to sell their products and in defense of the rural world. The protesters, more than 100,000 according to the Government Delegation and 400,000 according to the organizers, demanded that the government act to improve their situation and called for urgent aid to the sector to ensure its future. They call for “a crash plan” that will address the high costs and low profitability of the sector, problems that have been aggravated by the war in Ukraine, with further increases in fuel prices and the shortage of products such as cereal for livestock feed. UNITED BY THE COUNTRYSIDE The protest brought together the main agrarian and livestock organizations in Spain, who sent a united message, with which they want to transmit a “enough” to the Government and announce that it is only the beginning “if they are not listened to”. “The countryside has come to say enough already” that “they put the food and work of many people at risk,” said the president of one of the main farmers' associations, Asaja, Pedro Barato. Similarly, the president of Agri-food Cooperatives, Ángel Villafranca, spoke to the media, who emphasized that it is not possible for a sector that produces food for all of Spain and Europe to be in the red and that they need “tools to continue living”, because without it there is no food. For his part, the secretary general of the Union of Small Farmers (UPA), Lorenzo Ramos, demanded that speculation be stopped and the law of the food chain be enforced so that agricultural producers cannot sell below what it costs them to produce. Farmers are under pressure from large distributors, who demand that they sell at very low prices, to those who have very little pressure, especially if they are perishable products, which they then see in supermarkets at prices much higher than those they have sold. THE FIELD ARRIVES IN THE CAPITAL Some 1,500 buses arrived in Madrid with the demonstrators, accompanied by tractors and animals, from hunting dogs to horses, as a symbol of the rural world, along with the sound of trumpets and cowbells. The march saw a lot of color, which was provided by the regional and Spanish flags, and there were even people in light suits (the clothing of bullfighters), since the defense of bullfighting was one of the demands. The protest started from the Ministry of Agriculture and traveled along Paseo del Prado and La Castellana, the main artery that runs through the capital from north to south, until it reached the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge. The call was also joined by hunting associations and defenders of the fighting bull, as well as the parties Vox (far right), the conservative People's Party (PP) and Citizens (liberals), whose leaders attended the demonstration. The goal, according to the organizers, was to “raise their voice and claim the future for the peoples”, in what they call their biggest manifestation after the pandemic, a period in which they were considered “essential” to ensure the supply of the population in full confinement. A FUTURE FOR THE RURAL WORLD All these problems make life in the countryside more and more unfeasible, leading to the abandonment of this sector by the younger population, which also results in depopulation in large areas of inland Spain. In Spain, it does not reach the million people who work in the primary sector, barely 4% of the country's total population, and the majority are older people, making it very difficult to change generational. In this regard, the deputy from Teruel Existe, Tomás Guitarte, the only representative in the Spanish Parliament of an unpopulated platform in Spain, declared today at the demonstration that “agriculture and the rural world can collapse” in the current situation. For this reason, he said that the Government “must act quickly to solve immediate problems such as rising prices for fertilizers and diesel”. In addition to the problems already mentioned in the countryside, the strike in freight transport is being added these days due to the rise in fuel prices, which is affecting key sectors such as milk, fruit and vegetable producers, whose products are perishable. The sector also suffered during these months a prolonged drought that put at risk the campaign for some crops and before which the Government announced this week a package of fiscal, labor, financial and hydrological aid.