Farmers, like police, have been back protesting – in farmers’ case with a new ‘slow march’ in the so called ‘western region’ of Portugal, between Bombarral and Caldas da Rainha.
On the island of São Miguel in the Azores, farmers have also met to decide ‘new actions’ of protest.
All this comes as in Brussels, CAP – the national federation of Portuguese farmers – emerged from a meeting with the European Commissioner last week to say that they had been told that the European Commission will speed up the approval of farm subsidy payments, but “the ball is in the Portuguese government’s court”.
And this has always been the problem – the way the current Socialist government has dealt with such ‘balls’.
Last week’s protest in the west saw farmers once again accuse the minister of agriculture (Maria de Céu Antunes) of lying and “no longer worrying about the sector as she is on the way out” (this being a reference to the elections on March 10).
José António Marcelino, part of the slow march in Bombarral, told Lusa that as far as he is concerned, “the only thing (the minister) is doing is lying. She is leaving, and lying is easy because she’ll be gone in no time…”
The protest was held to reinforce farmers’ problematic situations; their issues with constantly changing rules and regulations – and their hopes that politicians will start listening to what they have to say.
“Anyone who wins these elections has to start looking at agriculture in a different way,” said José António Marcelino. “We will need a very strong minister of agriculture to defend the sector here and in Europe.
“Right now, we are not asking anything of the current government, nor the minister who never existed and never wanted to know about us. There would be no point meeting with her,” he added.
As reports have explained, part of the problems in the agriculture sector centre on ’rigorous controls’ for European farmers who are then faced with competition from cheap imports from countries that have not been bound by the same controls.
“We cannot receive products that come from outside Europe, produced with pesticides that we haven’t used for many years,” José António Marcelino explained. “The rules have to be the same for everyone.”
There are other issues – like the elevated costs of agricultural diesel and electricity, the taxes on the sector, the length of time it has taken NOT to address key issues:
“We cannot let water hurtle into the sea when it rains, and not take advantage of it. There has to be investment for the situation here not to get as bad as it is in the Algarve,” he stressed.
The ‘good news’, however, came in CAP’s round of meetings in Europe from which the confederation emerged believing farmers’ issues are being ‘recognised’. It is simply a question of getting Portugal’s new government ‘on board’, and active.
