The grazier leridano Jaume Bernis, new state manager of the pork sector of COAG

The Catalan grazier Jaume Bernis will be the state manager of the pork sector of COAG during the next four years. The producer leridano will be accompanied by the onubense Enrique Action, that will be at the top of the subsector of pork Iberian. Like this it decided in the first meeting of the sector after the XIII General Assembly of this organisation, in which, apart from choosing to the new responsible, analysed the main challenges that have to face the producers of pork in the future more immediate. “In what it subtracts of year have an aim prioritario; work so that those exploitations that initiated the formalities that allow them tackle the investments to fulfil with the new normative comunitaria of animal welfare, waiting for receiving the credit to begin the works, can continue with his activity. And can do it further of 1 January of the year 2013 and are not sanctioned”, has aimed Bernis in his first statements.

During the bilateral meeting of the past week with the Minister of Agriculture, the members of the Executive Commission of COAG moved this request to Arias Cañete so that it demand to the EU some flexibility for those exploitations that have initiated the works of adaptation but do not arrive to the term established with 100% of the modifications realised. Besides, it requested when titling of Agriculture that prioritise the exploitations of pork in the plans of modernisation of exploitations of the Plans of Rural Development (PDRs), as well as an extention of the bonuses of the interests of the loans conceded to the sectors graziers in the 2008 by the spectacular rise of the basic raw materials for piensos.

And is that the cost of the adaptation is brutal: 250-300 euros/sow, by what, in a half exploitation of 500 sows, the necessary total investment would situate between the 135.000 and the 175.000 euros. In Spain exist some 75.000 exploitations of sows, what translates in a global cost for the sector above the 1.000 million euros. The manager of COAG has remembered that in the current economic situation is very difficult to tackle the necessary investments by the fault of liquidity and the fetters to access to banking credits. “The margins of profitability of the last five years have been in a lot of negative cases and do not concede credits when declaring losses in the exploitation” has underlined the grazier leridano.

Jaume Bernis in his pork exploitation, where has rooms of motherhood and also of destete. Photo: JARC.

During the meeting of April of the Consultative Group of the EU on pork, the representative of COAG, Jaume Bernis, remembered to the European Commission that in the year 2001, moment in which it agreed the date of entrance in force of the rule of welfare in pork for the year 2013, split of a situation of high prices of the meat, and that now the situation is very different. They observe as prices very underneath of this threshold and with the costs of production in record levels, accumulating five consecutive years of negative balance in the account of result of the exploitations.

The pork sector represents one of the sectors of greater strategic importance in the agricultural sector. The final production of the pork sector represents 35,2% of the final production Spanish grazier and 11,4% of the agricultural final production state.