The traditional cultivation of the dry vineyard is the “only agricultural alternative” to preserve the ecosystems of Doñana. Farmers hide behind this to claim aid for a sector that is at severe risk of disappearance due to, they explain from the cooperative OnuCoop“low profitability, problems of generational change or abandonment of the land”.
Multiple studies support, as this newspaper already reported, that the cultivation of rainfed vineyards is the ideal way to protect the natural space, since farmers cultivate 100% of the vines in the Doñana Biosphere Reserve using traditional methods that provide “climate regulation, erosion control, contribution to soil formation and contribution of habitats for species”. Thus, its maintenance and expansion are considered “vital” for the conservation of Doñana, they expose from OnuCoop.
Forty years ago, the Doñana Park did not present the environmental problems it has today. Four decades ago, 16,000 hectares of vineyards were cultivated in what is the Biosphere Reserve, a figure that has been progressively reduced to the barely 2,000 that are cultivated at the moment. This is a consequence, as explained by the aforementioned cooperative that brings together more than a thousand farmers, of crops that are not profitable and, therefore, end up being abandoned.
Faced with this “slow agony” that could well be translated, they warn, “in the disappearance of the dry vineyard”, they ask for help. And they do so to all possible administrations. However, they find a “silence” in most of his writings, as OnuCoop insists.
They denounce “inaction” on the part of the regional governments that have followed one another over the years, although they acknowledge that the Junta de Andalucía assures them that “they are working.” Likewise, “we see no interest in the central government or in the municipalities where our cooperatives are located (Bollullos, La Palma, Manzanilla, Chucena, Villalba and Huelva). In fact, they state, “they have only approved, unanimously in full, to help to the vineyard and study economic measures that allow profitability the municipalities of Almonte and Rociana“.
They have also empathized with this thousand farmers the Huelva Federation of Entrepreneurs (FOE), the Chamber of Commerce of Huelva and the DO Condado de Huelvawho “seek solutions to the problem within their possibilities”.
They receive “real help”, as they brand it from Onucoop”, thanks to the financial support of the Fundación Caja Rural del Sur; to a joint project with Fertinagro to reduce fertilizer units by 80% and the carbon footprint by 50%; already Garcia Carrion“who gives us their support in the marketing of the musts and wines that we produce”.
The sector of the dry vineyard requests “urgently” the economic support of the administrations for the export projects of bottled wine and change in the fertilization model”, since they demand direct aid to the farmer “for their work of environmental protection “, specific training plans with a job bank and the recovery of abandoned land.
The objectives with all this, argue from the Huelva cooperative OnuCoop, are the achievement of environmental improvements, the fixation of the population to the territory, the generation of wealth or the reduction of the problem of generational change. The cooperative thus adds that, in this way, an agricultural activity with more than 500 years would be preserved which “is a unifying crop, cohesive in terms of family and territorial relations and which forms part of the backbone of a space that wants to be a reference in sustainability“.
He OnuCoop Governing Councilmeeting on April 20, approved the implementation of different protest actions, see the preparation of banners, future concentrations and demonstrations, and even the possibility of carrying out a rally in the Doñana Biosphere Reserve.
2023-05-01 04:07:42
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