Agroaldea
Food autonomy is 10% and the Island is in a position to reach the 20% and the 30% in the coming years.
Gran Canaria barely grown 9.000 hectares of more than 30.000 that has irrigation, an underuse of the lands that the Cabildo intends to put an end to in order to move towards food sovereignty, which is not at all a utopia, nor was water thanks to desalination.
This was stated yesterday by the island president, Antonio Morales, at the inauguration of the I Food Sovereignty Conference, Territory and Rural Development held at the Granja del Cabildo, where the power of the consumer to achieve change was highlighted.
Gran Canaria has soils, resources, capacity and, definitely, conditions to overcome your 10 percent of food autonomy and reach in the coming years the 20, the 30, “and I even hope that the 40 percent established by the FAO”.
To do this, The Cabildo promotes a variety of measures such as the creation of a land bank with disused public and private lands, a seed bank, promotes the reopening of infrastructures currently closed such as the Los Corralillos agricultural center and the Casa del Vino, or the design of an ambitious training program 140 courses for 2016 already underway, in addition to uniting the sector and its more than 40 organizations in an island council.
And it is that a 10 percent of self-consumption is really a figure “shameful”, assured the Minister of Food Sovereignty, Miguel Hidalgo, who exposed the Strategic Plan for Rural Development of Gran Canaria before a packed auditorium, which demonstrates the interest and involvement of organizations and municipalities in favor of self-consumption.
Morales recalled that food sovereignty is a concept defended by the UN to which Gran Canaria joins by “many reasons”, like what import the 90 percent of what you consume affects not only dependency, but to the worsening of climate change -As an example, he cited the energy consumed by transporting a yogurt from France., which adds to the fact that Gran Canaria only produces the 1 percent of its inputs.
So, continued, The Cabildo's ecosocial project is based on three pillars: water sovereignty, energy – on which desalinated water for agriculture also depends –, and food. Is about “a fundamental trident for the development of Gran Canaria”.
In any case, there are “many things that must be corrected because it cannot be that sometimes an imported product is helped more than that of the Island”, although it is also “awareness is very important, read the labels well and opt for local consumption, give value to local markets: Consumers can be the first to help”.
Citizen awareness and involvement, the keys
The speakers agreed on this need to advance citizen involvement, as stated by the Minister of Rural Development of the Government of Navarra, Isabel Elizalde, who is committed to food sovereignty as a tool to empower local products and stop climate change, a global problem that must be solved by citizens through social action groups.
These groups, who act as intermediaries between local producers and the administration, They have a lot of potential to gain ground for agribusiness, which in the case of Navarra gives “a lot of employment”, But in wanting to grow, they stopped consuming local products to look for cheap and imported raw materials with a whole series of negative consequences for local production., the landscape and even self-esteem.
Also Asier Arcos, technician of the Emmaus Social Foundation, He also referred to the need for citizens to revalue the rural world to “do” from the local. In this sense, presented the results of a research work carried out in Álava, Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa, where they studied twelve agricultural experiences from which they drew the conclusion that citizens, as a responsible consumer, plays a leading role in the development of rural initiatives.