The Union of Small Farmers and Livestock Farmers (UPA) of Castilla-La Mancha has once again put the focus on the “delicate structural situation” that the European wine and spirits sector is experiencing. Its head of Wine, Alejandro García-Gasco, has laid out this scenario both at the meeting of the Wine working group of Copa-Cogeca and in the civil dialogue group of the European Commission.
During his remarks, García-Gasco described a “critical” context and underscored the urgency of “taking measures in this regard.” UPA has raised what would happen in Europe if a production campaign considered normal were registered, without the reduction resulting from extreme weather phenomena and from climate change that, in recent years, have caused shorter harvests, as the organization detailed in a press release.
In this scenario of “sustained decline” in consumption, “high volume” of connecting stocks, and “the pressure of inflation,” a harvest in usual parameters “would drive the sector into a collapse that is difficult to manage.”
The organization has also pointed to the “anomaly that suffocates producers,” noting that the market no longer compensates for the drop in production.
Contrary to what the traditional law of supply and demand dictates, the reduction of volumes finds “no solace or compensation” in the prices that winemakers receive, who see how their profitability deteriorates campaign after campaign—a situation that UPA has been denouncing for some time.
Compared with other key sectors such as olive oil, which has storage mechanisms to modulate supply in moments of imbalance, UPA laments that wine continues to have no “effective tools” for intervention and crisis management.
In the Spanish case, the farming organization warns that vineyard uprooting is not being addressed as an organized sector strategy, but that many farmers are choosing to uproot their vines of their own accord, “driven by lack of profitability,” with the aim of transforming their holdings toward crops with greater economic prospects.
In view of this situation, UPA argues that the current circumstances mean that “it is necessary to address a restructuring of the European wine and spirits sector that involves, in a co-responsible manner, all Member States and all winemakers, without exceptions,” García-Gasco has stated.
"It is the time to look for alternative solutions to the mere reduction of European productive potential, while keeping the door open to imports of wine from third countries," he has said.
From the organization, it is considered that applying internal cuts without limiting external competition implies "assuming an unacceptable risk arising from globalization that directly penalizes the European producer".
At meetings held on 12 and 13 November, both via telematic means and in person in Brussels, the representative of UPA reminded the EU institutions that administrative timetables do not correspond to the daily reality of the countryside.
"The vineyard does not understand deadlines or reforms; climate change impacts the campaigns directly," he stated. "The winegrower can’t take any more," he concluded, calling on the European institutions to put in place urgent measures to help alleviate a crisis "of extreme gravity".