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AGROS President challenges the Minister to stand by the farmers

The inauguration of the new facilities of ABLN - Association for the Support of Dairy Farming in the North and of SEGALAB - Laboratory for Animal Health and Food Safety, took place on March 15th, in the space AGROS, on the margin of a Seminar for Technicians and Livestock Producers, which was attended by the Minister of Agriculture, Maria do Céu Antunes and the president of Agros, Idalino Leão



In this event, where issues related to Animal Health and the new Law on Veterinary Medicines were addressed, the president of AGROS, Idalino Leão, stressed the importance of animal health as a guarantee of safety and quality of food produced by farmers, warning that "it is urgent that the vaccines, including the Blue Tongue vaccines, are quickly made available to Livestock Producers Organizations for its proper application, as it is essential to restore the fair allocation for the implementation of this vaccination plan on the ground.

PEPAC continues to generate discord in the sector

It was in a very assertive tone that Idalino Leão addressed the Minister regarding the PEPAC - CAP Strategic Plan, particularly with regard to applications for the eco-regimes, stating that "it is urgent that this situation be resolved. We cannot always be hiccuping".

He recalled that, as he had already pointed out several times, this is a "very complex, bureaucratic and difficult to execute PEPAC that is urgent to solve these bottlenecks that penalize the production of which we are in deficit as a country.

To reduce part of this deficit, Idalino Leão sees as essential "the suspension of the greening rules, so that farmers can sow all their available area, since the war and its effects are still felt in the costs of raw materials," considering it immoral if this does not happen.

Rise in agrifood prices - farmers unfairly accused

Idalino Leão attributes the rise in prices of agri-food products to the brutal increase in associated production costs and, in the case of milk, as INE's data show, the price to the producer was frozen for 10 years. "It is necessary to guarantee a fair income for producers, because the low agricultural income in Portugal was still 12% less in 2022 and we cannot continue in this spiral of impoverishment," claims the president of Agros.

At the end, a challenge was launched to the Minister of Agriculture to be on the side of farmers and production in the next meeting of PARCA, to be held on March 22, "because farmers cannot be the ones to bear the costs of war, inflation and the weak bet of successive governments in food production," he concluded.

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