Follow the press conference of the Council of Ministers that will approve a rescue with direct aid to farmers due to the drought

The Government plans to approve a rescue for the countryside suffering from the drought with a package of measures that it plans to agree on at an extraordinary meeting of the Council of Ministers called for this Thursday. According to information that EFE has had, the new package of measures will contain direct aid for the agricultural sector to avoid the increase in food prices.

The measures will be detailed in the press conference after the Council of Ministers, at 12:30 p.m., by the Third Vice President and Minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera; and the head of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Luis Planas.

Drought and high temperatures, more typical of summer, predict the worst rainfed cereal harvest of the 21st century in Spain. The agricultural unions have calculated losses of 9 million tons of cereal, almost 50% of the total harvest last year.

For this reason, the agrarian organizations have demanded from the Government the rescue of the field, which could arrive this Thursday, at the start of the electoral pre-campaign of 28-M. “The rainfed cereal sector must be rescued, because otherwise there will be no capacity to plant next year,” COAG warned last week.

Measures already taken

Since last year, the Executive has taken measures to support the agricultural sector to face the drought, such as the decree of March 15, 2022 with aid in fiscal, labor, social and financial matters, valued at 450 million euros.

Said norm was approved days after the meeting of the National Table of Drought in which a permanent working group was created to monitor the impact of water scarcity on agriculture.

At the last meeting of the Drought Roundtable, on April 19, it was found that the drought situation was “serious and widespread”, although with different degrees of affectation between crops and territories.

In recent months the Government has given other aid to livestock and the citrus sector, as well as to alleviate the increase in the cost of fertilizers, worth 650 million euros.

The social contributions for companies and the self-employed have been deferred, the number of laborers necessary to be entitled to the agricultural subsidy has been reduced, and hiring has been equated as a discontinuous permanent contract in the Special Agrarian System of Social Security.

Among the fiscal measures, the yield of Personal Income Tax (IRPF) has recently been reduced by 25% in the system of modules for all producers, with higher coefficients in certain crops.

Along with other reductions, the Government estimates the scope of this tax reduction at 1,807 million euros on the tax base, a “historic” figure compared to 1,093 million last year.

The Government has also allocated 25 million euros to subsidized loans and guarantees, and increased aid for contracting agricultural insurance, with a budget of 257.7 million euros in 2022 and 317.7 million in 2023.

CAP and water policy

Regarding the Common Agrarian Policy (CAP), the Executive has requested an increase in the advance payment of the aid that can be paid from next October 15 and the easing of the conditions to access payments due to the drought.

Government sources have recalled that there has been an “unprecedented increase” in investments in water, of almost 70% since 2018, up to 541 million euros.

The quotas of the regulation canon and the water use rates have been reduced between 50 and 100% in the Guadiana and Guadalquivir basins, where emergency works have been undertaken, and the cost of water from state desalination plants and in the Júcar-Vinalopó pipeline.

Likewise, there is a forecast to invest 23,000 million euros more in the approved hydrological plans, 3,167 million euros in water until 2026 with European funds, 2,150 million euros to modernize irrigation systems and 1,600 million for purification, sanitation, reuse, efficiency, digitization, ecosystem restoration and security.

Forbidden to work in the street with a lot of heat

The Council of Ministers will also approve this Thursday the prohibition of working outdoors when episodes of extreme heat occur. This was announced this Wednesday by the second vice president of the Government, Yolanda Díaz, and sources from the Ministry of Labor explain that, specifically, companies will be forced to reduce or modify the hours of the working day if in the area in question it has been declared orange or red alert for heat.