In recent decades, the importance of a vital sector for our Archipelago has steadily declined: the primary sector. Currently, the primary sector in the Canary Islands does not cover the minimum self-sufficiency quotas recommended by the EU, as it does not reach 20% of the needs of its inhabitants; a percentage that is not at all homogeneous, since the production of cereals in the Canary Islands is so small that it does not reach 0.8%, so necessary in the Islands to cover the demand for bread, gofio, pastries, pasta or confectionery, among other foods.
The low profitability and the extra costs of the raw materials needed for the crops that support the sector have generated a retreat towards other sectors such as tourism and construction. According to data from the Canary Islands Institute of Statistics of 2018, the cultivated land amounts to 45,000 hectares, compared to a useful agricultural land without use of 85,000 hectares, that is, in this agricultural year approximately 60% of the arable land is abandoned in the Canary Islands. This panorama is aggravated if we add the constant aging of the rural population due to an absolute lack of generational replacement.
The young people of the Canary Islands who have grown up and lived in rural areas know the sacrifice it means to carry out an agricultural or livestock farm; the risks they run are evident and, on many occasions, are compensated with little economic incentives. That is why many choose to look for another way, moving away from the countryside. Their option has been to train in areas of economic activity that generate a more stable and less punished means of life.
The crisis of the last decade has also affected sectors such as construction and has generated little industrial development, which has led to a small rebound of illusion in many young people who have made the decision to look again at the countryside and bet on agricultural and livestock activity. This is detected in the projects presented to benefit from public aid to young agricultural entrepreneurs. However, too often expectations are frustrated by bureaucratic difficulties that prevent them from being carried out.
Those who manage to overcome the obstacles and move forward, whether in agriculture or livestock, both bovine and caprine, agree on the difficulty of not only getting a place to exploit the activity, but also the immense dedication required to start due to the costs derived from mechanization and, above all, due to the global economic difficulties to finance the start and implementation of the project. The reality is that most of the young people who face this challenge hardly survive during the first two or three years, which leads to a deterrent effect for other young people who may be interested in the sector.
Young people demand greater involvement and sensitivity from public institutions, but also from private companies in all sectors that are linked to the agri-food sector in one way or another. They also require that bureaucracy be simplified and that the incorporation of young people into the primary sector be genuinely facilitated.
Certainly there has been some initiative from the Government of the Canary Islands in this regard and this has enabled the creation of 250 agricultural companies governed by young people under 40 years, but the figures indicated at the beginning of this article speak for themselves and require a real institutional commitment that enables the essential generational change and the rational exploitation of the Canarian agricultural land.
This sector should have higher levels of self-sufficiency. It is essential for the development and well-being of those who live in this land and need to be supported by those of us who inhabit this land. We must be aware that eating local products helps not only ourselves, our well-being by acquiring fresh products, but also all those young people who have opted to join an essential generational change in the Canarian countryside.
Deisy Ramos Cabrera is Deputy Secretary of Action and Political Strategy of the Nationalist Youth of the Canary Islands (JNC)
