Agro-protests arrive at Barcelona

Protests that have been blocking streets in Germany and France in the past few weeks arrived this afternoon at Barcelona. Diagonal Avenue and Aragón Street were completely blocked as shown in the video below.

Farmers in the European Union must follow strict production rules which are not mandatory in other countries out of it. Those requirements put local producers in disadvantage when competing in price with lower cost imports. Vegetable picking is not worth when their growing costs in EU are already higher than market prices set by low-cost imports. When talking about vinegar industry, vegetable growers that are also producing their own vinegar might have stronger ability to compete, as they own a larger part of the supply chain than pure farmers. Wine vinegar is probably the sector where this applies most.

All in all, the situation won't be solved until EU guarantees all vegetables entering its economic zone from abroad are grown following comparable regulation as local producers. This could be implemented by applying a similar mechanism to Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). CBAM will consist in setting extra import fees from 2026 onwards on cement, iron and steel, aluminium, fertilisers, electricity and hydrogen entering the EU from countries with less stringent climate policies.