The National Family Agriculture Law, star project of the Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, for the current legislature is about to end up as water of borrajas. According to Planas himself, he stated at the end of June before the members of UPA (an agrarian organization very assertive about the existence of the future regulation) “we will work on it until the end of the Legislature,” adding that all the policies of his department already have family and professional agriculture as their epicenter.
In this sense, it is not surprising that the Union of Small Farmers (a group that is also linked to the socialist party) has been reminding for a few months that "The Family Agriculture Law is a commitment of investiture of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez", so renouncing it would mean giving up one of the electoral commitments of the PSOE.
According to the information disseminated by the Ministry of Agriculture itself, in March 2025 the public consultation process was opened prior to designing the draft Family Agriculture Law, receiving 67 contributions from entities and organizations in the sector and civil society. For now, little more is known about the work of the promised regulation.
From CAP 2023-2027 to CAP 2028-2034
The last reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (the main aid policy for the Spanish countryside in the last 50 years, whose budgetary weight is so important that Brussels modifies and adjusts it every time the Financial Framework of the 27 is approved) came into effect in 2023, three years later than planned. This delay was due to several issues: the 2020 pandemic, the elections to the European Parliament with the consequent change of Commission, and a new functioning of the CAP, which since 2023 has a specific program for each country (PEPAC) with which it aims to better adjust economic aid to the agri-food reality of each member state.
Therefore, it was surprising that, six months after the CAP 2023-2027 came into force and after all the work and debates held between 2017 and 2022 on the agricultural structure in Spain, the then Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas, launched as an electoral promise a Family Agriculture Law that would complement a recently reformed CAP.
The objective of the future Law would be, on one hand, “to update the Law on the Modernization of Agricultural Exploitations of 1995” and on the other to identify who is a professional farmer, who is a principal or part-time farmer, what the role of women in the rural world is, and other issues already debated for the design and drafting of the Structural Plan of the CAP of Spain, PEPAC, 2023-2027.
Three years later of raising the need for a complementary Family Agriculture Law to the CAP that helps define which are the priority entities towards which European aid should be focused, Planas defends that now, before getting down to work, we must take into account the changes that the future CAP 2028-2034 may bring, which has already begun to be debated in Brussels. "When a draft Law is presented, it will not have blank pages and for that we need to conclude the negotiation of the future CAP," argued the Minister of Agriculture on June 25 to the affiliates of UPA.
“It may be too late tomorrow”, they added then from that agricultural organization.
Other family agriculture laws
In Spain there are already two Family Agriculture laws led by socialist governments but at the regional level: the Family Agriculture and Land Access Law of 2023 of Castilla La Mancha, and the Law for the protection and modernization of social and family agriculture and agricultural heritage of Aragón, also from 2023 but recently modified and with a new team from the Popular Party at the head of the Government of Aragón.
At the time, both projects generated quite a debate because they aim to concentrate public aid on the family agriculture model, which is the traditional Spanish and European system, which also guarantees the maintenance of the rural environment.
Is the concept “family” appropriate?
However, while it is true that this is the traditional model, it is also true that the reality of the countryside is in continuous transformation. In fact, while UPA is the agricultural organization that for years has raised the flag of Family Agriculture, COAG embraces it with more or less enthusiasm and ASAJA bets on a business agricultural management, whether of a family or a company.
In fact, some voices knowledgeable in the matter claimed that a law that centers the model of its agriculture on the concept "family" may result in failure, since, for example, there are family farms linked to aristocratic landowners; agricultural activity is closely related to land ownership, so today, there are few people outside the sector who can join it and if support is given to family agriculture, there will be even more; moreover, in some family farms, "family help" does not end up being paid work and becomes invisible, etc.
All of this leads to deducing that, while the family agriculture model could be preserved because it is traditional and helps keep the countryside and rural environment alive, just as happens in other economic areas, reality incorporates other factors to consider and complicates both the definition and the limits of what type of agriculture should be supported the most.
Agricultural laws approved by Planas
Luis Planas (currently very focused on his career as a possible director-general of the FAO) boasts of being one of the ministers of Democracy who has been at the head of the Agriculture portfolio for the longest time.
He also boasts of the laws he has approved during his term: the PAC 2023-2027 (which is almost a mandatory approval for all member states); the reform of the 2013 Law on measures to improve the functioning of the Food Chain; the Sustainable Fishing and Fisheries Research Law of 2023 and the Prevention of food loss and waste law of 2025.
Despite considering them a milestone, Planas acknowledges that “laws, just the right ones, because they are very complicated to negotiate. You present a bill, they present an amendment and they throw you off track.” Perhaps this difficulty, along with the weakness of a government that does not achieve a majority in the Congress of Deputies, is what lies behind a Family Agriculture Law in limbo.