The agricultural organization Asaja Almería has expressed its concern over the decision of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to reject the exceptional authorization requested by the Junta de Andalucía to use spirotetramat against the "Thrips parvispinus" pest.
According to Asaja, this refusal leaves producers "without sufficient tools" to combat a pest that remains active and causes "significant damage" in the province’s pepper farms.
The organization recalled in a statement that it has been calling for "effective solutions" for three campaigns to contain the spread of the insect, a situation that, "far from being resolved, has worsened", with "greater losses, increased costs and fewer and fewer tools to protect their crops".
In this line, it considers it "incomprehensible" that farmers are required to apply strict protocols of prevention, monitoring, cleaning and removal of affected plants without being provided with sufficient alternatives to stop the pest.
"All responsibility cannot continue to be shifted to the farmer while the administrations do not offer effective solutions," the organization emphasized, which calls for the implementation of concrete measures to address the problem.
Asaja Almería has likewise highlighted integrated production and biological control as "pillars of the provincial agricultural model", although it insists that they must be reinforced "with effective active substances and compatible with auxiliary organisms, always with the proper technical guarantees".
For this reason, it has asked the Ministry to review the existing legal alternatives, detail the reasons for the refusal and actively participate in the research and development of solutions, instead of leaving the weight of this task solely to plant protection product companies and to the producers themselves.
The organization has also underscored the economic importance of pepper in the province, with some 12,500 hectares of cultivation under plastic, its contribution to employment and its "fundamental weight" in horticultural exports.
In this context, it has warned that the spread of thrips "directly threatens the profitability of thousands of farms and the competitiveness of one of the strategic crops for Almería agriculture".
Likewise, Asaja Almería has reiterated the need to harmonize the authorizations of phytosanitary products within the European Union, considering it "incomprehensible" that certain products approved for certain uses in some member states cannot be used in others, "generating inequalities among farmers who compete in the same market".
At the same time, it has questioned the "insufficiency of controls on imports from third countries" and has called for "reciprocity in production conditions".
"The tools of European farmers cannot continue to be limited while they compete with imported products obtained under different phytosanitary requirements," concluded the agricultural organization.