The Minister of Agriculture, Narvay Quintero, announced this week after a meeting with representatives of olive growers' associations of the islands, that the Government of the Canary Islands is working on the call for direct aid to producers to alleviate the effects of the drought that will include olive groves in addition to other crops.
Representatives of the Association of Olive Growers of the Canary Islands (ASOLICA) and different groups of producers, the general director of Agriculture, Javier Gutiérrez Taño, the director of the Canarian Institute of Agri-Food Quality (ICCA), Luis Arráez Guadalupe, the first deputy mayor of Arico, Andrés Martínez, and technical personnel linked to this productive subsector participated in the meeting.
During the session, the attendees conveyed to the head of the department the need for financial support to farmers and oil producers to compensate for the loss of income due to the low production of an "extraordinary" olive harvest due to the effects of climate change.
In this sense, the head of the department explained that this aid to farmers is expected to be published at the end of the year and recalled that the increase of up to 550 euros per hectare of the aid from the Community Program to Support Agricultural Production in the Canary Islands (POSEI) to this crop, implemented for the 2023 campaign and paid in 2024, is consolidated for the following campaigns.
"This campaign has been especially bad for this sector due to a very deficient flowering due to the lack of cold hours and the increase in temperatures, and as the farmers explain to us, this crop, which requires a low water requirement compared to other crops already established in the islands, is being especially harmed by the effects of climate change," Quintero said.
The head of the area also pledged to study a formula to financially support the olive oil industry "in the face of this extraordinary situation due to the current campaign" and to address with the Canarian Institute of Agricultural Research (ICIA) the development of a study to assess the influence of climate change on olive groves in collaboration with other administrations.
