Spain’s new ‘old’ agriculture minister: What’s on the menu for Luis Planas

11 months ago 35

Spain’s re-appointed minister for agriculture, Luis Planas, has promised to continue to prioritise the triangle of “youth and women, water and digitalisation”, signalling that, in his third term in office, he will stick to his established course.

“My first goal is to ensure that, in this transition to sustainability, our farms are profitable,” Planas told the Spanish Senate on 21 November in his first appearance since being re-appointed.

Recently re-elected socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez has put Planas in charge of the agriculture ministry for the third time, amid challenges such as Spain’s severe droughts, rising prices and a lack of generational renewal in farming.

“If there are no young people and no women there is no future,” Planas told Spanish lawmakers.

In this sense, putting forward a law on family farming and a national food strategy to promote rural employment and improve dietary patterns “will be the main lines of action to modernise the agricultural and fishing sector”, said Planas a few days later, during the first meeting of the new agriculture ministry.

He pledged to improve irrigation systems, promote ecological and regenerative agriculture, and make progress in decarbonising and renewing the Spanish fisheries fleet.

On the EU stage, Planas now faces the final stretch of Spain’s bittersweet presidency of the EU Council which will end on 31 December.

Key priorities like the approval of a pesticide reduction framework – turned down by the European Parliament last week – and the regulation of new genomic techniques (NGTs) – an issue on which EU countries are split – will most likely remain unresolved.

Planas will chair the last Agrifish Council on 10, 11, and 12 December, when EU ministers are also expected to hash out divergences between the Commission and member states on next year’s national fish quotas.

“Spain, as presidency, has to help reach a[n] agreement,” said Planas, “but (…) as the leading fishing country in the EU, we will also have interests that will be defended”.

Spain has the largest fisheries fleet in the EU in terms of tonnage and has traditionally had a strong say on EU fishery policies.

On the horizon for Planas is Spain’s 2024 report to the EU Commission on the performance of its national strategic plan for the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP), which the EU executive will review the following year.

Around the same time, negotiations about the new post-2027 CAP are expected to take off, and Planas will have to defend Spain’s interests in the talks.

Mixed feelings on a third Planas term

The Spanish Union of small farmers (UPA) welcomed Planas’ “vast” experience and reappointment, but said some of his promises “are urgent measures that the Spanish countryside has been awaiting for far too long”.

UPA called for more dialogue with farmers and “a real and effective application” of the food supply law – which aims at reaching more balanced and transparent trade relations in the value chain.

On the other hand, Spain’s Young Farmers’ Association ASAJA said Planas has been “the most pernicious minister (…) since the advent of democracy”.

Asaja criticised the “very negative effect” of the CAP in Spain’s southern region of Andalusia and Planas’ “poor defence of the sector against third countries”.

Among other things, Planas has been an avid defender of the EU-Mercosur trade deal, which has also been a priority for the Spanish Council presidency in the context of its ambition to put relations with Latin American countries centre stage in Brussels.

“If Europe does not do it, others will,” he told Euractiv in a recent interview referring to a trade deal between the EU and the Mercosur countries, although acknowledging the complexity of the negotiations.

However, some farmers’ associations, including ASAJA, have come out against the deal and fear an influx of third-country foodstuff produced at lower standards that would crowd out domestic producers.