The Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food Sovereignty of the Government of the Canary Islands prioritizes investments in irrigation water and compensation to the primary sector for drought and the increase in the cost of supplies in its agricultural and fisheries policies.
This was announced today by the head of the department, Narvay Quintero, at a meeting in Fuerteventura with the councilors of the area of the Cabildos to take stock of the year and coordinate actions to optimize resources, reduce bureaucracy and generate synergies between these administrations.
During the meeting, the head of the area explained that "his department's budgets for the next financial year include an investment of around 20 million euros in irrigation infrastructures, which, he indicated, completes the 13.4 million euros of 2024 corresponding to the ten desalination plants, financed with remnants of the Rural Development Program (RDP) and the regional government, which the Executive will make available to all island corporations during the next year with the aim of increasing water resources for the countryside and alleviating water scarcity".
Other measures to achieve this goal will be direct aid aimed at potato, grape, olive, forage and temperate crop and sweet potato farmers, worth 3.58 million of own funds to compensate producers for the effects of the drought, which the regional Executive plans to pay before the end of the year.
In terms of fisheries, the Government will pay in the coming weeks another 3 million euros aimed at aid to compensate fishermen and aquaculturists for the loss of profitability derived from the increase in the costs of supplies as a result of the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Regarding this event, the Minister referred to the importance of "putting on the table the different actions carried out by both administrations and also the needs of each of the islands, taking into account their uniqueness, to continue promoting the Canarian agricultural and fishing sector".
The head of the department, who was received by the president of the Cabildo of Fuertevetura, Lola García, was accompanied during the session by the Deputy Minister of the Primary Sector, Eduardo García, and the general directors of Agriculture and Livestock, Juan Ramón Hernández Marín and Andrés Díaz Matoso, respectively. On behalf of the island corporations, the island councilors of Fuerteventura, Matías Peña, El Hierro, David Cabrera, Tenerife, Valentín González, Lanzarote, Samuel Martín, Gran Canaria, Miguel Hidalgo, and La Gomera and La Palma, Noelia Morales and Alberto Paz, who participated telematically, attended. The island director of the Cabildo of Gran Canaria, Alejandro Báez, and the head of cabinet and the technician of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Gladys Acuña and Tania Acuña, also attended.
The island president, Lola García, thanked the round of meetings that Minister Narvay Quintero is holding throughout the islands to address issues related to the primary sector, "which demonstrates his sensitivity to the eight Canary Islands." "From the Cabildo we have always made clear the importance of the majorero countryside and sea as one of our great government priorities and we must go hand in hand with the supra-island administrations so that they understand the importance of our professionals receiving sufficient funding to ensure the competitiveness of the primary sector."
During the session other issues were addressed, such as the modifications made to increase the execution of the funds of the Special Supply Regime (REA) in favor of the sector or, on the other hand, the state of processing of the Regulation that regulates Agricultural Uses and Complementary Uses.
As Quintero explained, this document, whose publication is scheduled for next year, "establishes agronomic criteria and parameters, unifying criteria in all the municipalities of the Canary Islands to facilitate the authorization of new agricultural exploitations and constructions linked to them by the town councils, and will speed up these procedures that normally take time and are a brake on the development of new facilities."
The payment schedule of some POSEI actions was also presented, which the Ministry has managed to advance during this year, and the strategy that the Government of the Canary Islands is following together with the sector to demand before the European institutions an upward revision of the financial sheet of the POSEI aid program to compensate for the increase of more than 50% in production costs borne by producers in the islands compared to 2007, in addition to the payment of 11 million euros of the additional POSEI assumed by the regional Executive against the non-payment of the Government of Spain in relation to this State aid, among other issues.
