Olive Growers in Extremadura Ask for Expansion of Wage Subsidies

La Unión Extremadura, an agri­cul­tural union, has called on the cen­tral gov­ern­ment to expand pre­vi­ously announced wage sub­si­dies from sea­sonal work­ers to olive grow­ers.

In October, the gov­ern­ment low­ered the min­i­mum num­ber of work days required for agri­cul­tural labor­ers to access unem­ploy­ment sup­port from 20 to 10 days in Andalusia and Extremadura.

The cen­tral gov­ern­ment cited Spain’s pre­cip­i­tous pro­duc­tion decrease, which has led many olive farm­ers to reduce the num­ber of work­days dra­mat­i­cally.

The decrease has been espe­cially felt in Extremadura, Spain’s third-largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing region, home to 11 per­cent of the country’s olive groves. APAG Extremadura Asaja esti­mated the region would have its worst olive har­vest in his­tory.

“If the gov­ern­ment of Spain under­stands that there has been a dras­tic decrease in pro­duc­tion, espe­cially in olive groves, due to cli­ma­to­log­i­cal phe­nom­ena (drought and heat) and that for this rea­son, the work­ers must be helped, why not help the farm­ers who have suf­fered these cli­ma­to­log­i­cal adver­si­ties,” the union said.

The union pre­dicted that olive oil pro­duc­tion in the region would decrease by 60 per­cent, while table olive pro­duc­tion is expected to fall by 70 per­cent.

Compounding the expec­ta­tions of a poor har­vest are ris­ing pro­duc­tion costs, includ­ing fuel, elec­tric­ity and fer­til­izer.

“Neither the Ministry of Agriculture nor the Junta de Extremadura has plans to help these pro­duc­ers,” the union wrote. ​“In addi­tion to suf­fer­ing these losses, their sit­u­a­tion is aggra­vated by the impres­sive increase in pro­duc­tion costs.”

In an indi­rect response to the union, Begoña García, the regional agri­cul­ture min­is­ter, told a con­fer­ence that the gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to the olive sec­tor.

“[The Junta de Extremadura] is 100 per­cent com­mit­ted to the growth, improve­ment and inno­va­tion of the sec­tor,” he said, point­ing out that 250,000 had been ear­marked for the devel­op­ment of the sec­tor over the next half-decade.

“Extremadura, together with the west of Andalusia and Portugal, is the engine of the increase in the area of​olive groves in Spain,” he con­cluded.

• La Unión Extremadura
• El Economista