SPAIN-AGRICULTURE: Cotton Farmers Up in Arms over Subsidy Cuts

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Sep 1 1997 (IPS) - Spain’s cotton farmers will follow up on roadblocks staged over the weekend with demonstrations Wednesday in Madrid to protest subsidy cuts, which kick in when production exceeds the quotas set by the European Union (EU).

The quota-subsidy dilemma is not new in Spain, nor does it only affect cotton farmers. Olive producers protested months ago, as did dairy farmers before them.

The protests were triggered by the application of the Common Agrarian Policy (CAP), with which the 15 EU member states regulate agricultural production in order to keep prices stable and protect their markets from outside competition.

In exchange for keeping production in line with the set quotas, local producers of cotton, olives and olive oil receive EU subsidies – which are cut if the quotas are violated.

Spain’s agricultural producers argue that not only do the subsidy cuts means serious hardship, especially for small and medium farmers, but they argue that CAP is contradictory to European leaders’ defence of free trade and the opening of markets.

Spain’s annual cotton quota is 249,000 tonnes. But the EU committee governing cotton matters as well as private sector and public sources predict that this year’s harvest will be more like 375,000 tonnes.

Associations of agricultural producers in Spain estimate the losses caused by the application of the penalties at around 70 million dollars.

Andalucia, in southern Spain, which accounts for 93 percent of the country’s total cotton production, has been hit especially hard by the measure. Most of the region’s roughly 12,500 producers are small and medium farmers, although a few own 100 hectares or more, considered a large tract of land in western Europe.

Cotton farmers in Bajo Guadalquivir, an area near Sevilla, the capital of the autonomous community (province) of Andalucia, are having a particularly hard time. The 7,000 cotton growers there – 60 percent of Spain’s total – are already facing serious financial difficulties, while the property of around 2,000 farmers has been foreclosed on, due to losses in the past few years.

Over the weekend, when tourists were heading home from vacation, cotton farmers blocked highways and freeways that link Madrid with the beaches of the Mediterranean and which run through cotton-growing regions.

Police were heavily deployed, and the protesters not only clashed with security agents in the Andalucian provinces of Sevilla and Cadiz, but also with drivers.

Women cotton farmers set up a roadblock on the Sevilla provincial highway near the city of Lebrija, allowing vehicles through for only five minutes every one and a half hours. The ‘El Pais’ correspondent reported several incidents between the protesters and angry drivers. To shouts of “go back to work,” one of the women responded “work is what we do so you can go to the beach!”

The secretary-general of the cotton producers’ association, Miguel Lopez, announced that some 2,000 cotton farmers would gather in Madrid on Wednesday, when the ministers of agriculture of Spain’s 17 autonomous communities will meet with Agriculture Minister Loyola de Palacio – who Lopez accuses of having broken off the dialogue.

The under-secretary of agriculture, Nicolas Lopez de Coca, said he did not understand the reasons for the roadblocks. He urged the farmers to negotiate cotton prices with the processing industry, and said the Agriculture Ministry would mediate between the farmers and the industrialists over the next few days.

But none of the parties involved – neither farmers, public functionaries, trade unionists, EU representatives or agribusiness concerns – have referred to a deeper issue underlying the crisis: the need for alternative crops that would be competitive in the national and international markets.