The Government will authorize on Tuesday the use of fallow to plant sunflower and “probably” corn

The Government will include in the package of measures to alleviate the effects of the war in Ukraine that it will approve on Tuesday the authorization so that farmers can take advantage of the 10% fallow and areas of ecological interest for the cultivation of sunflower and corn, raw materials that were imported from the Baltic country.

“The orientation of the sowing is going to be directed basically to sunflower and probably to corn, depending on the agronomic circumstances of the different surfaces”, announced this Thursday the Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, who has clarified that the measure, authorized this week by the European Commission to alleviate the supply problems caused by the Russian invasion, will affect 10% of the total 21.5 million hectares of the useful agricultural surface of the country.

Thus, in the use for sunflower, 60% of which is imported from Ukraine, its prices are taken into account, yesterday at 499 euros, and “also due to lower needs for water and fertilizers that are currently expensive”.

In the case of corn, added Planas, the authorization comes from the needs of the feed industry “Although we are going to cover most of them through imports of alternative originbasically from Argentina and the United States, and in fact the operations are ongoing”.

Planas has participated in the presentation of the monograph ‘Rural Spain: challenges and opportunities for the future’, edited by Cajamar and coordinated by Eduardo Moyano, Research Professor at the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC).

Planas has also advanced that, during the Spanish presidency of the EU during the second half of 2023, is planned to analyze and discuss “the future of gene editing and of the new genetic editing techniques in relation to production” to advance in the objective of producing more with fewer resources and doing so “with all the guarantees of food security”.

In relation to the need to review the objectives of the Farm and Table Strategy to guarantee food security, Planas has said that one must be very careful. “I was one of the ministers, probably, says Timmermans, the one who led the rebellion of the ministers of agriculture so that the Farm to Fork objectives, which were quantitative, were not automatically transformed by an EC communication into immediately legally binding in their application. This position, which used to belong to Spain, now belongs to the Council, the Parliament and the Commission, that is, any of the aforementioned objectives has to be accepted voluntarily by the Member States in the Strategic Plans either through a financial support measure, or a regulatory action. We can only accept those goals that we have set for ourselves.”

That said, he continued, “what we have to take into account is that we cannot change everything we have done from A to Z, but simply modalize and, above all, take into account the timetables in relation to the application of certain measures”.

Although, he added, it is a “very attractive” debate from the political point of view and there are those who, “denying the environmental orientation of this CAP” find it a great source for discussion. “Virtue is at the center and we will have to do it without a doubt with the schedule for the implementation of certain measures, but this does not in any way call into question the orientation of the fight against climate change and environmental preservation, which is absolutely necessary” .