The Union of Farmers of Castilla y León (UCCL) has warned this Wednesday that the imminent cereal campaign will be conditioned by "very high" production costs and a collapse in prices, with drops that could be around 30 percent in durum wheat.
"We are starting the campaign with these premises and, furthermore, in the crops in the northern part of the country, we must add the high temperatures of these days, which are totally anomalous and we hope will not last much longer," added the OPA, which has quantified the "high production costs" at about 200 euros additional per hectare compared to the previous campaign.
To carry out its analysis, UCCL has reviewed the main reference markets at the state level and has prepared a study on the evolution of prices between 2021 and 2026. This work shows a clear containment of prices, with decreases that can exceed 30 percent in durum wheat, 12.97 percent in soft wheat, 10.40 percent in barley, and 13.74 percent in grain maize.
The agricultural organization has put the current situation into perspective by comparing current prices with those of three decades ago, an evolution that it has linked "to a large extent" to the continuity of massive cereal imports from Ukraine. "It cannot be that Spanish farmers are the scapegoats of the war in Ukraine," lamented UCCL, which stressed that international conflicts affect these figures, "both for their increase and now for their decrease."
At the same time, the OPA has called for measures to curb the "high costs" of production, which, it acknowledges, are the main burden for cereal at the moment. UCCL has detailed that the average increase of close to 30 percent in diesel and fertilizers, common to different crops, causes the projected margins to be "quite reduced" and has reiterated the concern of a sector "that has generally always been profitable, especially due to the versatility and utility of this crop."
In this context, UCCL has reiterated that, in order to cover "these extra costs," it is essential to maximize the aid announced by the Government within the framework permitted by the European Union and to authorize coverage of up to 70 percent of extraordinary expenses until December 2026, in addition to putting new proposals for support for cereal on the table.