SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, July 10 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries of the Government of the Canary Islands, through the General Directorate of Agriculture, has completed the draft decree-law on land consolidation for the reconstruction of banana plantations affected by lava on the island of La Palma .
It is a document based on consensus and that has had the participation of affected administrations and neighbors in the numerous meetings held on the island to collect and contribute the requests of the victims.
Its main objective is to make profitable the existing farms before September 19, 2021 and damaged by the eruption through a redistribution of the land and the redistribution of property, and which is governed by the basic principle of compensation to achieve a balance between the farms of origin and the new farms that are assigned to the owner.
The reparcelling process is based on a feasibility study for the replacement of the banana trees affected by the lava, which was entrusted by the Ministry to the company Tecnologías y Servicios Agrarios SA (Tragsatec) in order to define the lines of action to be followed to the reconstruction of the area.
The plan includes the delimitation and characterization of the affected surfaces, with the identification of the degree and type of affectation; a global feasibility analysis of the replacement in the area damaged by the lava flows, with the preparation of a map of the affected area where the classification of the territory is shown based on its viability for the installation of the new banana crops; in addition to a study to analyze the legal-administrative issues that govern the plots and land affected by the eruption.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries of the Government of the Canary Islands published months ago on the web www.planvallelapalma.com the draft decree-law on land consolidation for the reconstruction of farms buried by lava.
At the Gesplan offices, located in the municipality of El Paso, on the island of La Palma, farmers and ranchers affected by the decree-law have been assisted, providing them with the necessary information for their queries.
The general director of Agriculture, Augusto Hernández, has stressed that “this document represents the only way to rebuild and the guarantee before the European Commission so that POSEI aid can be maintained for producers who lost their farms as a result of the eruption volcano; the decree law must be approved by the new government”.
He also explained that “it is not a common macro-farm, but each owner will have a plot equivalent to the one they had at the beginning of the volcano.” “The Agency for the Management of Normality on the island of La Palma (AGESNORM), which is created through the Ecological Transition decree, has flexibility in decision-making once the reparcelling process begins, and always based on geological conditions,” Hernández pointed out.
