“We promise to mediate in the negotiation of the farm agreement”

The primary sector has been affected by many changes, the covid-19 in 2020 and now the war in Ukraine. To this we must add the eruption in La Palma, which hit mainly agriculture in Los Llanos and El Paso as well as fishing in Tazacorte. All this has made production costs more expensive, but farmers, ranchers and fishermen continue to earn the same as four years ago.

There is a problem in the Canary Islands with the loss of cattle heads. What policies are you going to develop to stop this?

The data from the island slaughterhouses reflect this reality and that is why the first measure we took was to modify the Specific Supply Regime, something that had not been touched in the last four years, so that it would come into force this August. We have done this in record time because food costs have risen a lot and it was necessary to increase aid by 20% to lower costs. In addition, in the last three years money from these funds has been returned to Europe and that seemed like a bad decision to us.

The Food Chain Law sought to cover the farmer’s production costs, what is it failing?

The State did something very simple by approving that rule and giving the communities the power to apply it. The law is not clear when it says that the cost of production is paid to the farmer since it does not oblige the intermediary or the final distributor to pay it. What is established is that an agreement must be reached and that if an agreement is not reached there will be a mediator, but it does not define who will be the mediator either.

To try to fix that, the previous Executive of the Canary Islands began the creation of a control body, will they continue with it?

We will try to create that body definitively so that there are inspections and sanctions. We also have to validate that the production costs of each product are on a platform that the whole world can see and that it is official so that anyone who does not comply will face sanctions. It will be difficult, but compliance with the law is our fundamental objective.

With the most expensive shopping basket in Spain, business associations in the Canary Islands have asked to withdraw the AIEM from basic products. What do you think?

The AIEM is a very important mechanism for job protection. This tariff is dynamic and the Government will always be willing to modulate it, but removing it is not even on our minds.

How can the Canaries improve their food sovereignty?

The previous government left a Food Sovereignty Plan that has very interesting parts. We are going to implement everything that comes positive, but it is true that an important part is missing from this plan, the financial record. Food sovereignty is transversal and we have to commit governments, councils, town halls and society. We are committed to measures such as Ecocomedores, which consists of bringing zero kilometer products to schools. We want to extend this to hospitals and, why not, to hotels. The tourism sector owes a lot to the primary since it lives from the attractiveness of its landscape.

One of the problems in the sector is the lack of generational relief, how can it be corrected?

That goes through training. Several schools depend on the council, three of them are for agricultural training and are in La Palma, Tenerife and Gran Canaria. We also have two fishing schools, one in Tenerife and one in Lanzarote. Despite this, there is a lack of qualified labor in the agricultural and livestock sectors, so we must make an effort to specify their needs. We believe that young people do not see a future for the sector because they do not believe that it is dignified, so we must ensure that the rancher, farmer or fisherman has a decent income, his days of pay and vacations.

Since you have talked about wages, the agreement for the Canarian countryside has expired since 2018 and there is not even a dialogue between the employers and the unions. Is counseling going to mediate?

It is true that it is not a responsibility of the Government but exclusively of employers and unions but it is no less true that we have the responsibility of being mediators. Seven years ago, when I was a director, I sat down one of the subsectors at a table so that they could reach an agreement and it was achieved. In the case of the agreement in the Canary Islands, the unions have been demanding a meeting for a long time and, since there is no progress, we promise to sit the employers and unions at a table to try to reach an agreement.

It rains less and less and the Canaries dries up. What are you going to do to mitigate the effects this will have on the field?

The great challenge facing the Canary Islands is water. Climate change and desertification force us to find an economic and sustainable way to guarantee water to the inhabitants and the primary sector. In 2018, a protocol was signed in which there was a plan agreed with the councils that included the necessary works for the conduction, storage, transformation and extraction of water for agricultural use. It was the councils, with their insular water councils, who planned how to invest the 1,100 million euros of that agreement in 12 years. Nothing has been done in this time and that is why we are going to demand that the agreement with the Government of Spain be fulfilled. Meanwhile, we will try to alleviate the most urgent works with our own funds, but the Canary Islands do not have the economic capacity to do everything that was proposed at the time.

What are these urgent works for water?

In Lanzarote and Fuerteventura there are two fundamental networks that exceed 12 million euros. In Gran Canaria we want to act in the northwest, in the area of ​​La Aldea, as well as in the South, where there is a lot of water lacking because tropical and subtropical crops are being used. On La Palma, which is the island that had the most water, there are already deficiencies and desalination plants have been proposed to guarantee long-term supply. There, the completion of the Vicario Raft is also necessary, which seems like an endless work. In the outskirts of Tenerife, like Vilaflor, if we don’t act, a spectacular vineyard area could be lost. And there is also a need for pipeline works in La Gomera and storage in El Hierro.

What objective is marked from here to the end of the legislature?

Stabilize and dignify the primary sector. We want to ensure that the fishing fleet does not continue to decrease as it has been up to now, to recover the cattle herd that we had and that our cultivated hectares are stable in order to be able to achieve self-sufficiency in the future.

“We will demand that Madrid increase the tuna quotas for the Canary Islands”

It was landing in office and the fishing agreement between Europe and Morocco coming to an end. Do you think it could be avoided?

It was known since 2021, when the ruling of the European High Court of Justice came out, that the end of the agreement would come on July 17, 2023. It is true that the Government of Spain has appealed but there has not yet been a judicial pronouncement. However, I believe that it should have been negotiated to remove the disputed waters from the agreement and that fishing could continue in the rest. So what has happened is the fault of Europe and the Government of Spain.

Is state aid enough for those affected?

Some temporary aid was articulated with a duration of three months but this is not going to be solved even in six months, so they are very short. There is uncertainty about what will happen after the aid because the stopped ships generate expenses such as the payroll of the workers or the cost of berthing.

Have Canarian boats been left out of the economic compensation?

Of the 15 ships that were in that agreement, there are three that can be accommodated because they work specifically in the waters of the agreement and have been forced to stop. And then there are the rest of the boats that could fish in Morocco but also fish in other waters. If the latter stop, they lose a lot of money, so they continue fishing tuna in Canary Islands waters and, according to the bases, they cannot receive aid. We have proposed to the Ministry that these ships be paid the proportional part of the compensation.

They have asked to be present in future negotiations on this agreement. Have you already received an answer?

Clavijo considered that the most affected region could be in the meetings, which due to its proximity to Morocco is the Canary Islands. Europe usually invites neighboring regions to meetings, even without a vote, to try to capture their characteristics. We sent a letter to the Minister but, between the elections and the fact that the Government is in office, there has been no response.

It is a historical demand of the Canarian fishermen to increase the tuna quota, do you agree with the current quota?

We demand that in the Canary Islands there are no quotas regarding tuna because our fishing is completely artisanal, with a hook. Article 17 of the European sustainable fishing regulation, which sets the guidelines that member states must comply with, says that a greater quota must be given to that sustainable and artisanal fleet. This Spain does not comply. In fact, 12 boats from the Mediterranean coast take more quota than 200 boats from the Canary Islands. And scientific studies have shown that we catch tuna weighing more than 200 kilos and with that weight the survival of the species is not endangered. The Mediterranean does put tuna at risk by catching it with 30 kilos and then fattening it. It is very different to fish it with 30 kilos than with 200.

In the midst of the negotiations to invest the future president of the Government of Spain, CC could be decisive. Have you transferred to Clavijo any request for his counseling?

We are going to ask to expand the tuna quotas and the opening of fishing throughout the year. Limiting fishing to a few months saturates the market and lowers the price. As long as we have a quota, which the objective is not to have, at least we should be able to fish all year round and calculate when it is most profitable. Apart from that, we will demand the additional Posei, which for this campaign was 31.6 million and the State has only transferred 21 million. The REF specifies 100% of the additional Posei and it was a commitment from the Canary Islands Government to the State Government to expand the items but they did so without an economic record. So the State has the obligation, because it was signed, to pay. That is, we want the payment of the remaining 10 million euros.