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The Valencia Regional Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food is implementing a plan to change citrus varieties, a measure which is attempting to bring about a reorganisation and diversification of supply to stabilise the markets and, at the same time, make improvements in overall quality.

The programme involves subsidising up to 60% of a farmer’s costs in uprooting and then replanting citrus crops.

The plan, which according to a statement issued by the Regional Ministry itself, is “to improve profitability for farmers by moving production from December and January to the end of the season in order to cover the shortfalls in supply to markets at the end of the season.”

Sources for the Regional Ministry point out that the measure, essentially a structural one, will yield results in the medium-term and will mean that new varieties will be introduced to extend the season, as is the case of high quality late citrus, “to supply commercial markets in the best way possible and for longer”.

To be able to benefit from this plan an orchard has to meet certain requirements, such as being between 0.3 and 18 hectares in size, as well as having a specific density of trees depending on the crop.

The subventions granted to farmers will be a minimum of 30% of the subsidisable investment, equal parts being provided by the Ministry for the Environment and Rural and Marine Affairs and the Regional Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. This subsidy can be increased by 10% if the farmer is a professional farmer, 10% if s/he is a young farmer, 5% if the beneficiary comes from a disadvantaged area and 5% if s/he is a member of an Organisation of Fruit and Vegetable Growers (OPFH).

The subvention can be given for up to 18 hectares between 2008 and 2013.

This measure from the Valencia Regional Government is an extension of the National Variety Reconversion Plan for Citrus started by the government last October. A Royal Decree has established the regulatory basis to award grants to renew orchards of oranges, satsumas, clementines, hybrid and common mandarins, lemons and grapefruit.

As Cirilo Arnandis, President of the Spanish Fruit and Vegetable Cooperatives explains, “the plan is a good measure to lay the foundations for policies that provide incentives to concentrate supply. It should enable the production map to be redrawn in such a way that those specific moments of excess supply are better spread out over the year. It is also the ideal framework to be accompanied by a plan of uprooting and voluntary renunciation”.

A sector that needs to change

Consecutive poor seasons and the chaotic first part of the current season have demonstrated the need to change many things in the sector, although this is nothing new.

Considering the disastrous developments this season 2008-2009 where the low prices perceived by growers have resulted in a lot of fruit being left on the trees, the measures still seem insufficient. The unsatisfactory concentration of supply (the majority of growers are not organised in Grower Organisations), the retraction in consumption brought on by the crisis, the lack of order in the market, the scarcity of shipments to the processing industry, size, an unbalanced variety schedule and the impossibility of implementing effective common solutions within Interprofessional, are questions that the sector still has to tackle.