The regional secretary for Agriculture and Forestry reaffirmed, today, the defence of the interests of the Azorean farming sector, classifying it of “strategic and fundamental” for the Region.
Noé Rodrigues, who was speaking after the meetings, in Angra do Heroísmo, with the directions of the União de Cooperativas de Lacticínios Terceirense (UNICOL) and of the Associação dos Jovens Agricultores Terceirenses (AJAT), emphasized that so much in the past as now several strategies and efforts are current for the safeguard of the sector, in the framework of the revision of the Common Agricultural Policy (PAC).
In this extent, he remembered the dislocation to the archipelago of the European commissioner for Agriculture, at invitation of the president of the Regional Government, when of the announcement of the end of the dairy quotas and the presence of a representative in the Parliament in Brussels in the works of attendance of the revision of the CAP.
“We have been participating in all the technical and of work meetings that are being developed as part of the revision of the CAP”, he said.
After the meeting, carried out as part of the regular meetings with the social partners of the farming sector, Noé Rodrigues still underlined the “capacity of sensitization of the national and Community deciders” in this matter, factor that allowed the recent approval of new funds for the Azorean agriculture.
“We had the possibility to reinforce - and very much - the POSEI envelope for the support to the profit of the Azorean producers which is a result of the useful, continuous, intense work that is made next to the Ministry for Agriculture and next to the European Commission” he affirmed.
However, Noé Rodrigues reiterated the position of the Azorean Government of defence of the current system of quotas in the European Union because this regime "protects" the specificities of the Azorean dairy production, face to productive centres “that can benefit of savings of difficult access” to the local investments.
The regional secretary alleged the agreed position resultant from the work prepared together by the producers' associations, industrial units and political forces for, in the impossibility of the regime of quotas to be maintained, “to bring to the Azorean producers a compensatory envelope to reduce the global competition in a regime of liberalization of the production”.
According to what he said, the Executive already managed to guarantee the creation by part of the Government of the Republic of a regime of compensation for all Azorean producers and the implementation of a positive discrimination in the attribution to the Azores of 23 thousand tons of the total of 38 thousand tons attributed to Portugal to re-structure the sector, as well as the guarantee that, in 2010, the prize to the milk products starts to integrate the POSEI financial packet, being this support put in perspective beyond 2014/2015.