The VIII Livestock Fair of San Isidro Labrador, held in Uga, brought together livestock farmers from Lanzarote and Fuerteventura. "They have common interests and problems, but they had never participated in an integrating day," explain from the Yaiza City Council, which promoted their meeting.
From the City Council they point out that the livestock farmers from both islands reviewed the situation of the sector with a "priority demand: to jointly request the Government of the Canary Islands to review the distribution of aid from the Community Program to Support Agricultural Production in the Canary Islands (POSEI) in a 'fair and transparent' manner".
The visitors congratulated the Yaiza City Council for promoting the First Twinning of Livestock Farmers from Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, with the commitment to hold a second meeting on the neighboring island. Bernardo Peña, representative of the Fuerteventura Livestock Farmers Platform, argued that "we must fight together because the interests are the same and there is no room for division".
Peña is a representative of the livestock farmers of the Canary Islands in the POSEI Table, where representatives of all livestock and agricultural subsectors of the islands sit together with the regional government. He insisted on the "need to set new distribution criteria, because the reality is very different from that of twenty years ago". In this sense, Peña recalled that the goat census of Fuerteventura until recently exceeded one hundred and twenty thousand head of cattle, while now it is around seventy thousand.
"Vitality, despite the difficulties"
The acting mayor of Yaiza, Gladys Acuña, and the head of the Primary Sector Area, Marcial Viñoly, opened the discussion table in the company of the president of the Association of Artisan Cheese Factories of Lanzarote and vice president of the Spanish Network of Rural and Artisan Cheeses, Tito González Medina.
Gladys Acuña argued that "despite the difficulties, the primary sector shows signs of vitality with significant advances in technology, without losing the essence of the products of our land". "This is supported by the regional, national and international awards won by artisan cheese factories of Yaiza and Lanzarote," she added.
More than twenty members of associations, cooperatives and different groups linked to the livestock sector of Fuerteventura arrived in Uga on Saturday, all integrated in the Livestock Farmers Platform of this island.
More than 300 specimens in Uga
Between Friday and Sunday, the hundreds of visitors who passed through the Uga fairgrounds were able to appreciate about 300 specimens of the goat, sheep, cattle, horse, pig and camel herds of Lanzarote. A total of 34 livestock farmers from the island participated in the Fair.
After the assessment of the veterinarians Laura Artiles and Verónica Romero de Ávila, the organization announced the awarded livestock farms. In the batch of young females (goats that have not given birth), the winners were, in their order, the farms of Ángel Cabrera, Gonzalo Cedrés and Dolores Nieves Martín. The prizes in the goat batch went to Tito González, María Jesús Tavío and Iván Hernández, while in the sheep batch the distinguished were Tito González, El Faro and Francisco Arbelo. As for individual prizes (not by batch), in males, the awarded livestock farms were Matías Betancort, and Marcelo Machín, who was awarded both the second and the third prize. The distinctions in ram were taken by Finca de Uga, Paúl Bermúdez and Tito González. Representatives of Yaiza and the councilor of the Cabildo of Lanzarote and veterinarian by profession, Francisco Fabelo, presented the prizes.
The prizes of the I Contest and Tasting of Cheeses of the Uga Market were also awarded at the Southern Livestock Fair. This was, according to the City Council itself, "another event promoted by the Yaiza City Council to support the primary sector". In this contest, Quesería Tajaste obtained the first prize in fresh cheese, Montaña Blanca did it in soft cheese, Los Ajaches, in semi-cured cheese, and Finca de Uga, in cured cheese.
For her part, Gladys Acuña thanked and congratulated the livestock farmers of the island, the Island Council, the companies participating in the Fair and the municipal staff for "the support to the livestock sector and the consolidation of the Uga meeting".
