He Food Chain Observatory – a body attached to the Ministry of Agriculture, which seeks to achieve a balance between the links that participate in the process from field to table – will meet this Wednesday, February 14, with the protests of Spanish farmers as a background. Precisely, one of the first issues that the protesters denounce is the systematic non-compliance that has been made with this regulation, in force since 2021 and among whose precepts is that of that producers can sell its kind without losses.
It is a ordinary meeting of the organization, corresponding to this semester, as explained this week by the general director of Food, José Miguel Herrero. The Food Chain Observatory is part of the plenary session. agricultural organizations -Asaja, COAG and UPA- and the agri-food cooperatives of Spain, the National Federation of Fishermen’s Guilds and the Spanish Federation of Food and Beverage Industries (FIAB). The National Association of Large Distribution Companies (Anged) and the Spanish Association of Distributors, Self-service and Supermarkets (Asedas) are also represented, as well as wholesale and retail organizations from the different subsectors and consumer organizations.
Herrero, who participated on Thursday in a conference on food prices, assures that the food chain law is “complete”, despite the fact that also this week, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has committed to strengthening itto. In Spain has a “very competitive chain”, without widespread abusive practices, says the general director, who recalls the law itself provides for different tools, such as complaints, in the face of practices that contravene the aforementioned rule that prohibits, for example, selling at a loss. However, the agricultural unions have been denouncing for some time that, beyond the sanctions, “the ministry should begin by establishing the criteria to determine what the production costs are and ensure that the prices received by the farmer, the price at origin, are to live,” defends the union Unió de Pagesos (UP). They demand that the Food Information and Control Agency (AICA) act with ex officio inspections in situations of “abnormally low prices, as is the case right now with lemons,” they add.
The Minister of Climate Action, David Mascort, also sees some gaps in the law. “To know that a distributor does not buy a product below cost, the first thing one would have to know is that cost,” Mascort said this Friday in an interview on TVE in Catalonia. He gave the example of milk, which is currently produced at a cost of 0.38 euros per liter, “but that is something we know in Catalonia because we have done a study on milk and some other productions.” has underlined.
So much cooperatives such as industry and distribution point out among the causes of the current price situation the escalation of unprecedented food inflation. There is, they say, a direct relationship between climatic conditions and prices, with the case of olive oil, whose production in Spain has been well below the usual figures for two seasons.