By Jesus Calero<\/p>\n
MADRID, Jan 14 (Reuters) – The Spanish government on Wednesday rolled out new measures to open up access to farmland \u200bin a bid to revive an ageing farming sector, but \u200cfarm groups cautioned that land alone will not keep young people in the countryside.<\/p>\n
The announcement \u200ccame as the EU moves closer to signing its long-delayed Mercosur trade deal, a pact farmers warn could squeeze margins and weigh on young farmers’ willingness to commit to the sector.<\/p>\n
Farm unions across Europe are ramping up \u2060pressure over trade and farm \u200cincomes.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the government will launch a platform to centralise farmland data and unlock underused land, \u200dwith around 17,000 state-owned rural plots to be assessed for use by young farmers.<\/p>\n
Spain’s farm sector faces a sharp demographic imbalance, with about 40% of holders over \u200b65 and fewer than 9% under 41, government data showed, mirroring \u200can ageing trend across European agriculture.<\/p>\n
Farm groups broadly welcomed efforts to improve access to land, but warned the measures would have limited impact unless broader economic pressures were addressed.<\/p>\n
“Access to land is one of the main problems, but it’s far from the only one,” Luis Perez, a youth \u2060representative at farmer association COAG, told Reuters, \u200bciting low returns, paperwork and uncertainty around \u200btrade deals like EU-Mercosur.<\/p>\n
Farmers’ union UPA said it backed the government’s approach but stressed that speed and funding would determine \u200dwhether it makes \u2060a difference on the ground, also calling for sustained backing from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the bloc’s main farm subsidy programme.<\/p>\n
Sanchez said \u2060Spain would push for 10% of CAP funds to be set aside for generational renewal, \u200cdespite limited support among EU governments.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Jesus Calero, editing \u200cby Andrei Khalip and Ed Osmond)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jesus Calero MADRID, Jan 14 (Reuters) – The Spanish government on Wednesday rolled out new measures to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":695649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5312],"tags":[2000,299,209861,192520,5338,104,209860],"class_list":{"0":"post-695648","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-farm-sector","11":"tag-farming-sector","12":"tag-pedro-sanchez","13":"tag-spain","14":"tag-young-farmers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115894179756781369","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=695648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/695649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}