Some 200 carob producers from the Algarve met this Friday in Loulé to demand from the Government “mechanisms that allow control” of the marketing circuits to put an end to the “almost daily” theft of fruit from farms.
At the rally, convened by the cooperative AGRUPA, the only association of pottery and amêndoa producers in the Algarve, which runs together with Câmara de Loulé, the farmers “demand that a law be enacted” in the sequence of the proposal submitted by a non-area work group of action plan against citrus, avocado and carob theft.
The demonstrators carried signs that read: “There is legislation prepared, but the minister [da Agricultura] is stopped”, “the carob belongs to whoever produces it, enough of theft” and “we are tired of being robbed”.
The president of AGRUPA, Horácio Piedade, told Lusa that “producers are tired of waiting” for the publication of the law, a document that was worked on by the Regional Directorate of Agriculture and sent a year ago to the Ministry of Agriculture.
The Minister is the one who pushed us into the street fight because, unfortunately, carob thefts are on the increase, which have already begun in the orchards and will later spread to the warehouses where the product is stored, as happened in previous years.” he pointed out.
Horácio Piedade said that the document sent to the Government by the Regional Directorate of Agriculture of the Algarve “points out concrete measures that can prevent theft, namely mandatory registration with the IFAP (Financing Institute for Agriculture and Fisheries) for those who buy Fruit”. .
These are measures to control the fruit marketing circuits and, at least, prevent the majority of thefts,” he said.
The same opinion is shared by Macário Correia, former Secretary of State for the Environment of the Cavaco Silva government and carob grower in Tavira.
Macário Correia told Lusa that he had already been the victim of several robberies and that It is “urgently necessary for the Government to move forward with the legislation”.
“This year is a special year, because there is more production and the price is higher, and the thefts have already started for several weeks,” he said.
According to Macário Correia, “all this could be avoided if the Minister of Agriculture published the regulation that has been in the office for more than a year and that was prepared by the working group guided by the Regional Directorate of Agriculture of the Algarve.”
Mrs [ministra] it doesn’t post anything, it doesn’t do anything, and right now theft is rampant. This government has ministers who work and for whom I have consideration, but I have not seen anything from the Minister of Agriculture and, in this specific case, it is up to her to make the decision”, he pointed out.
The former official considered that, “for the moment, there are no administrative mechanisms to protect those who work, because they do not allow control of the carob marketing circuits.”
“It was enough that the invoice had the installment number associated to prove that the person is the owner of a land with carob trees and, another additional question, to force the payment to be made in a non-endorsable bank check, which requires crossing with a bank account ”, he stressed.
For Macario Correia, “there are legal and fiscal mechanisms to control the problembut without doing anything like the government has done so far, farmers continue to be robbed and damaged on a daily basis.”
“Today there is nothing that restricts the purchase of carob without verifying its origin, because nothing obliges whoever buys to have a possession document for carob and that is what must be done,” he concluded.
The president of AGRUPA admitted that carob growers can “harden the forms of struggle until the legislation is enactedthat can pass through the cut of the Estrada Nacional 125 or another access road to the Algarve during the month of August”.
“We did not want to reach this situation, but if they continue to steal from us, we have no other alternative,” he concluded.
Source: Observadora
