Manuel tours his lands in Los Cortijos with his calculator in his hand and his spirits are low. A lifelong farmer, he faces a storm where production costs suffocate any profit margin. After years of dealing with rising supply costs, the recent update of the Minimum Interprofessional Wage (SMI) for 2026 has been the last straw.
With twelve people in charge, the viability of its exploitation hangs by a thread: “You put numbers and they go down,” laments the Antena 3 Noticias reporter. And the context doesn’t help. According to the latest Agrarian Census of the National Institute of Statistics (INE), the primary sector in Spain had already suffered a loss of 75,000 agricultural holdings in the last decade, a drain that has only accelerated after the pandemic and successive energy crises.
“You have to stop and fire people”
The new regulatory scenario has put farmers like Manuel on the ropes. With the entry into force of the Royal Decree in February 2026, the Minimum Interprofessional Salary (SMI) in Spain has been set at 1,221 euros per month (divided into 14 payments), which raises the annual salary floor to 17,094 euros gross. For a standard 40-hour day, the cost per hour is already 9.26 euros (with prorated pay).
This increase, agreed on February 17 between the Government and the CCOO and UGT unions, represents an increase of 3.1% compared to the previous year, approximately 37 additional euros per month. However, the real financial challenge for small farms lies in its retroactive nature from January 1.
This forces employers to pay the arrears immediately in the next payroll, an unforeseen disbursement that, added to social contributions, is unaffordable for those who cannot pass these costs on to the final price of their products. “We’ve reached a point that can’t continue. You have to stop and fire people,” says Manuel with the crudeness of someone who sees their assets in danger.
Added to the wage pressure is an inflation in production costs that does not let up. Manuel points out figures that seem from another era: fertilizers and fertilizers have experienced spikes in increases of “up to 300%.”
This increase in the cost of inputs coincides with a cycle of persistent drought that has decimated the profitability of the land. Especially dramatic is the case of the olive grove, whose yield has fallen to historic lows not seen in the last three decades. The reality on the field is incontestable: “This year, the harvest has remained at 40%.” What in 2023 were warnings and fears about an unsustainable escalation of costs has been confirmed in 2026 as a structural crisis that threatens to further empty our rural areas.
Mechanization as a last resort
Given the impossibility of maintaining the current structure, Manuel’s strategy involves a forced transformation towards technology, although this entails an immediate human cost: “We have to invest in machinery and I have to fire three people because I can’t figure it out,” he explains.
Associations such as ASAJA warn that this situation is a chain that always ends in the same link: the citizen’s pocket. If producing a kilo of fruit or a liter of oil is increasingly more expensive due to “repeated increases” in costs and salaries, the price in the supermarket will continue to rise. For Manuel, it is no longer a question of winning more, but of being able to lose everything.