New government plan in Andalusia creates confusion

Organic farming has skyrocketed in Spain, especially in Andalusia. There is more to come since the Andalusian government has presented an ambitious plan, even though not everyone is enthusiastic. Seven main targets are described in it, the three most important ones being support to organic farmers, encouraging the Spanish consumption of organic food and enhancing the organic farming industry. 

Picture: Big EU money flow for Andalusia is planned

Nicolás Maldonado, a cucumber and tomato grower in Andalusia started farming organically only six years ago. This year, two new greenhouses were built on his land, doubling the amount of hectares he farms on, from two to four. Mr. Maldonado proudly shows the vegetable sproutlings that have just been planted in one of his new greenhouses. (Picture: Tomato packaging at Ecobalcon)

Also six years ago, José Martinez and his wife Ana Acosta started growing organic tomatoes not too far away from Mr. Maldonado's farm. Over the past years, they managed to expand their farm from 2 to 20 hectares. The couple is also going to have a 1000 square meter hall built where their vegetables will be packaged. "Soon we will hear whether the bank will give us a loan," says Mr. Martinez. 

In this same period Ecopark developed into a company that grows and trades in organic vegetables on an even wider scale. Today, several farmers are linked to this company and farm on 78 hectares of organic land. Just recently, Ecopark has had a huge package hall built. "We received 30 % in subsidies from the government for this," says Luis Olcina, Manager of Ecopark.

All these growers are fine examples of how Spanish organic farming has taken off in recent years. Between 2000 and 2005, the amount of organic hectares in Spain doubled from about 381,000 to 807,500 hectares. In the last ten years, the number of Spanish organic farmers has increased more than five fold, to 18,226. Most of them farm in Andalusia where more than half of the land dedicated to organic farming can be found in Spain.

In 2007, the Andalusian Ministry of Agriculture developed an ambitious plan to stimulate organic farming in this region even more. This directive will be in force until 2013. Seven main targets are described in it, the three most important ones being support to organic farmers, encouraging the Spanish consumption of organic food and enhancing the organic farming industry. Farmers who want to convert to organic farming can still count on financial support from the Spanish government. They are entitled to help for a period of five years. The first three years, all conversion costs are fully subsidized. In the last two years, they are 90 % covered.

One fourth of all the means in the plan are dedicated to supporting them. Apart from the already mentioned financial support, there are about 20 different sub-targets mentioned, varying from support to farmers who grow rare vegetable species and young farmers who want to convert to improving the knowledge farmers have of organic farming techniques and give them proper advice.

Although organic farming is booming in Spain, the official percentage of the Spanish population who buy organic food is about 0.9 % according to the Andalusian Ministry of Agriculture. "Most of it is exported to Northwest-Europe," says Juan José Soriano, highest civil servant at the organic department of the Ministry of Agriculture in Seville. "So we must create more balance between production and consumption of organic food in Spain by creating an internal market."

At present, it is impossible to find organic food in a regular Spanish supermarket. "We must do something about this," Mr. Soriano adds. "We also need to develop a system to distribute organic food in Spain and find distribution companies. Currently, there are only companies that export organic food."

The development of an organic farming industry in Spain is also one of the top three priorities of the plan in terms of money. However, there is not much information about how to accomplish this goal. The plan mentions this will be difficult because there are hardly any companies who sell organic food in Spain. It seems that this issue has to be solved first before an organic farming industry can be developed.

The other four targets of the Andalusian plan are aimed at more education and research, improving control and transparency, enhancing women’s participation and drawing up a new plan to develop organic farming in Andalusia for after 2013. Out of these four targets, the most attention is paid to improving control and transparency of the organic sector. There are six different certification organizations in Andalusia that all have their own interpretation of European rules on organic farming. This needs to be harmonized. According to the plan, control of these certification organizations must be improved, focused mainly on the transparency and verifiability of how these certifying organizations operate. 

To accomplish all the targets of the Andalusian plan for organic farming, Mr. Soriano has secured a budget of 317 million Euro. A large part of this sum, some € 215 million is dedicated to supporting farmers. The European Union is financing 75 % of this, about € 160 million.

However, much more money is estimated in this plan, up to € 1.5 billion if one adds up all the budgets for the different targets and their subdivisions. "It is not clear how much we can spend in total for the coming years," Mr. Soriano explains. "This will mainly depend on the newly elected government."

(Picture: In regions like Galicia - here organic meat at El Corte Inglés - and in Catalonia the local sales are much higher than in Andalusia where export is predominant)
 

Besides this, Mr. Soriano says that conventional farmers can also make use of these budgets. That seems odd since the plan only describes targets on how to improve the organic sector. Nevertheless, Mr. Soriano refers to the fine print when asked about this, although there is no fine print in the plan. (Picture: The Spanish market leader El Corte Ingles offers organic products for some years - but with a big price difference to conventional products)

Luis Guerrero, a technician in organic farming who works for the Ministry of Agriculture in Almería, an eastern province of Andalusia, can provide more information if asked. He has made a list of which targets of the plan are solely dedicated to organic farming and which can be used for conventional and organic farming.

This offers a whole new perspective on the plan: some 1.1 billion of the subsidies are dedicated to both conventional and organic farming. "These are the lies of politicians," Mr. Guerrero explains, after deliberately confusing the Spanish word for means, 'medidas' with the word for lies, 'mentiras'. As it turns out, the only targets of the plan that seem to have a secure financial funding are the ones that support farmers converting to organic agriculture. That raises criticism among already established organic farmers. "It is a big mistake of the Spanish government," says Mr. Olcina. "At the moment, there is more offer of organic vegetables in Spain than there is demand from Northwest Europe. We are all selling to the same clients. If they need only three lorries with organic vegetables and here we have six lorries waiting, prices will drop. Then it will become more difficult for organic growers in Spain to survive."
(Picture: Besides Catalonia only few consumers decide to buy organic products in Spain)

© Lydia Heida

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