`Catalonian Farmers Seek More Aid to Recover from Filomena - Olive Oil Times

Catalonian Farmers Seek More Aid to Recover from Filomena

By Daniel Dawson
Sep. 14, 2021 08:04 UTC

The Association of Young Farmers and Ranchers in Catalonia (JARC) has called on the Spanish gov­ern­ment for more funds to help olive grow­ers impacted by Storm Filomena in January.

According to the asso­ci­a­tion, the his­toric bliz­zard dam­aged 46,000 hectares of olive groves in three provinces across the autonomous com­mu­nity. Some olive grow­ers lost as lit­tle as 20 per­cent of their fruits, while oth­ers lost as much as 80 per­cent.

Overall, JARC esti­mated that it will take pro­duc­ers between two and three years to fully recover from the dam­age caused by Filomena.

Olive grow­ers in the autonomous com­mu­ni­ties of Madrid and Castille-La Mancha also reported exten­sive dam­age to their olive groves from the win­ter storm.

JARC said the orig­i­nal dam­age esti­mates cal­cu­lated by the Department of Climate Action, Food and Rural Agenda (DACC), which was used by the national insur­ance agency, Agroseguro, to make pay­ments to farm­ers, was done pre­ma­turely.

The asso­ci­a­tion is now call­ing on the DACC to return and make a new assess­ment of the dam­aged groves in Leida, Terres de l’Ebre and Tarragona, and send these new cal­cu­la­tions to Agroseguro.

The farm­ers after the prun­ing found a higher impact and a job of prun­ing much higher than in other years to remove all the branches bro­ken by the weight of the snow,” said Lluís Gaya, the head of the olive sec­tor at JARC, adding that the sec­tor was still grate­ful for the pay­ments already received from Agroseguro.

These were not only the ones that were removed with the prun­ing but they have been found, even later,” Gaya con­cluded. They were branches that looked in good con­di­tion, but were bro­ken, and now with the weight of the olives, they have given way or will do so before har­vest.”



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