IU regrets that the Vineyard and Wine Law benefits large producers by not limiting grape production per hectare
The coordinator of Izquierda Unida Castilla-La Mancha, Juan Ramón Crespo, has regretted that the recently approved Law of the Vine and Wine, by not limiting the production of grapes per hectare, “benefit large producers and perpetuate “an unsustainable model for a dry land”.
As reported in a press release by the party, Crespo believes that the regional government has missed the opportunity to have dealt with the regulation in greater depth by drafting a truly innovative law, because it considers that “much of what is contained in the document is already regulated in other regulations”.
For this reason, he has condemned the “lack of courage of the regional executive” in defending small and medium-sized farmers, who are the ones who work the vineyards directly.
As he has denounced, the regulation of Article 46, dedicated to actions in the field of regulation of the wine sector, contemplates the possibility of limiting grape production yields per hectare, but does not dare to quantify it.
“This lack of concreteness encourages small and medium producers to claim that as a general rule production should be at a maximum of 20,000 kilograms per hectare for white grapes and 18,000 kilograms per hectare for red grapes, destined for winemaking, allocating quantities exceeding these ceilings to the production of grape juice or wine for the distillation of industrial alcohol”.
“Those who exceed the quantities indicated are mainly the large producers, who usually coincide with those large investors who are sinking their teeth into our vineyard, who carry out large prospections for the collection of water destined to irrigate the vines, so they transform the cultivation of the vine, which has traditionally been rainfed, into an irrigated crop,” he criticized.
“This makes it an unsustainable model for a dry land like that of Castilla-La Mancha, and that because of climate change, more and more will be”, warned the regional leader of IU, who added that if the indicated ceilings had been marked, apart from the sustainability of the farms by limiting irrigation, two other benefits that the sector is demanding, such as an improvement in the quality of the grapes and a rise in the prices of the same, The main beneficiaries are small and medium-sized producers.
SOURCE: LACERA.COM