The marijuana plantations hidden among the corn fields, on the rise as a result of the economic crisis derived from the coronavirus, have become a serious problem for Catalan farmers. This is what the union leader says Union of Farmers Santiago Caudevilla: If in a field of 25 or 30 hectares the illegal marijuana growers use two or three for their plants, the farmer loses around 2,000 euros per hectare of the maize crop that fails. To this, he explains, we must add the possible breakdowns of the harvesting machines caused by the metal rods installed in his plantations. According to the union, the bills can be as high as 12,000 euros.
But the conflicts do not end there, according to Caudevilla, since on several occasions they are faced with difficulties “in proving to the police that marijuana is not their own.”
For all this, the farmers’ union has called on the Generalitat be able to plant plants of camo in the cornfields. This would prevent them from being an attractive location for growers of marÃa due to the risk of pollination of female plants, those that contain the highest percentages of the psychoactive component. With three or four hemp plants per hectare, which for the farmer represents a very small loss of harvesting and economic area, it would be enough, â € they explain.
Despite the fact that under certain conditions there are no legal problems to plant hemp, Unió de Pagesos claims to coordinate with the Generalitat: We ask that they make a register that avoids conflicts with the police forces when they make their registers, says Caudevilla.
Likewise, the agricultural union demands from the Catalan Government the necessary coverage to avoid losing the subsidies that the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union grants farmers with single-crop farms: The sowing of hemp in corn fields could be interpreted as a double crop and become an irregularity that ends in a reduction in financial aidâ €.
Unió de Pagesos warns that marijuana growers increasingly act with more planning and more sophisticated methods and considers that the crisis due to the effects of Covid, as happened after the 2008 one, may multiply the appearance of crops illegal.
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