Agriculture has always been a job in which you knew you would not be rich, but not poor, but it seems that the sector is more and more diminished and today is going through one of its worst moments. Although more than half a million people are dedicated to this sector, hardly half can live exclusively from it. The price drop, the competence of extra -community imports and the pressure of the intermediaries have turned this trade into an increasingly profitable activity.
In this context, the Creator of Content Jaime Gumiel He traveled to Logroño to interview Clara Sarramián, Autonomous Agriculture for four years, which tells the reality that the workers of the field has blurred: “Last year when trying to sell it they wanted to pay me at half the price of the previous year and I preferred to throw it, because in the end we all pass through the hoop what we are going to get is to go against us.”
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“I work alone, everything by hand, from Monday to Sunday”
Clara decided to continue with the family tradition when her parents retired. Since then, he faces the physical and mental effort demanded by the field every day. “I do conventional agriculture, what my parents did, and I work alone. Yes I have a tractor, but mostly everything is mule, hoe and hand,” he says.
The days are endless: “In summer you have intensive days, sleeping the minimum, from Monday to Sunday … 14 or 16 hours easy,” he explains. Although he acknowledges that “the physical in the end is very hard, but you get used to it,” what weighs the most is uncertainty: “Mentally is the worst, you can’t sleep thinking that you fall a hail and it ruins the coming months.”
Win less than it costs to produce
The greatest obstacle, beyond physical effort, is the lack of profitability. As clear, the prices they receive do not cover the production costs: “The production costs will be between 35 and 40 cents, because we are now selling at loss.”
His experience is clear: “With luck I will have sold it to 80 cents or 1 euro in Mercarioja, and then in the store you see it at 3.50. Many times it is that or lose everything.” The competition with imported products aggravates the situation: “You cannot compete, because there are no limitations that we have in Europe. People say that it values the national, but in the end they value their pocket more.”
Robberies, temporal and bureaucracy
Other problems are added to economic difficulties. Clara has suffered robberies in her farm: “In these four years I have already had a couple of times, one fat, and that we are in private property with fence. They still enter us.”
The extreme climate also hits hard: “An Airón in a minute can take the entire greenhouse, all shattered.” And the European bureaucracy adds more pressure: environmental requirements, PAC PAPE and regulations that, according to her, “want to remove the small farmer from the middle.”
“I don’t see myself in this in ten years”
The lack of generational relief is one of the greatest dangers. Clara acknowledges: “More than 90% of Spanish farmers are over 60 years old. People of less than 30 are not 1%. Thus it is impossible that there is future.”
When asked about his future, it is not optimistic: “I would love to continue, but I see it very complicated. It seems that they want to destroy the small farmer. A time will come when you say: it is not worth following.”
Even so, he finds some breath in direct sale: “What compensates me most is when a customer tells me: I had not eaten a tomato with this flavor since my grandmother cultivated it.”
The field, in danger of disappearing
Clara’s testimony reflects what thousands of farmers have been denouncing in the streets: that the Spanish countryside is at the limit. The sum of ruinous prices, unfair competition, droughts, temporary and lack of institutional support is pushing many to leave.
As the farmer itself concludes: “In the end it is we who produce food, which is the most fundamental thing there is. I would never have imagined that this would fail.”