Spanish farmers receive billions in aid due to drought

The Spanish government is helping the country’s drought-stricken farmers with a billion-dollar package. At an extraordinary meeting of the Council of Ministers in Madrid on Thursday, aid measures and investments for a total amount of almost 2.2 billion euros were decided, according to the left-wing government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

According to official information, a first decree includes direct support for agriculture and livestock, as well as tax benefits and government subsidies for insurance policies with a total value of 784 million euros. In addition, some 1.4 billion euros will be made available for the construction of new infrastructure such as water desalination plants.

“Spain has been dealing with droughts for years, but climate change is making them worse,” said Teresa Ribera, Minister of Ecological Transition. Extreme weather events will become more common in the future. The government stressed that the effects of the war in Ukraine were also felt in the agricultural sector.

In some regions of Spain, such as Catalonia, the reservoirs are only 25 percent full on average. According to the coordinating office of farmers’ associations, the situation is also “alarming” in Andalusia, Extremadura, Castile-La Mancha, Murcia, Aragon, Madrid and Castile and León. There, among other things, this year’s wheat and barley harvest would be considered practically “lost”.

The conservative opposition criticized the measures as insufficient and assured that Sánchez relied on populist actions ahead of regional and local elections on May 28 and general elections at the end of the year. Opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo said at a campaign rally in Valencia that investments of at least €40 billion in the water sector over a ten-year period are urgently needed.

(yam/sda/awp/dpa)