The general secretary of the PCP, Jerónimo de Sousa, defended this Sunday the need to support national farmers to face the brutal increase in the country’s production costs to guarantee food sovereignty.
“We are talking about a very important sector for Portugal and, with these concerns about production costs, it is necessary to give confidence that it is worth investing in national production,” said Jerónimo de Sousa, during a visit to a farm in . Lourinhã, in the district of Lisbon.
The general secretary of the PCP warned that farmers are registering “increases of more than 200%” in the costs of factors of production, specifically with electricity, fuel and phytosanitary products, which “leads to an unsustainable situation” for the farmers with the greatest difficulties. . .
For the communist, these increases can lead farmers to stop production and abandon the activity, if they do not have the capacity to respond, putting the country’s food sovereignty at risk.
“An uncontrollable rise in the prices of factors of production can lead to a situation of ruin, of inability to respond,” he pointed out.
According to Jerónimo de Sousa, measures to support production and price regulation in marketing circuits are lacking.
In this sense, he has defended, “the Government must guarantee incentives to this important sector or accept the blind rules of the market, which can lead to the abandonment of thousands of producers”.
For the communist leader, supporting agriculture “is a national imperative.”
FCC // Virtual Machine
Portugal/End
Source: Observadora
