In a statement, APROSERPA, the Association of Farmers of the Left Bank of the Guadiana (in the Beja district), revealed that it had asked the Ministry of Agriculture and Maritime Affairs to schedule “an in-person technical meeting with the utmost urgency, to take place by the middle of next week.”

At issue, the association stated, “is the situation of intense economic pressure experienced by the region’s agricultural holdings, which are simultaneously confronting the surge in agricultural diesel prices and a severe slump in the dryland cereal harvest.”

“Should there be no response to the request within the indicated timeframe, the association is prepared to resort to other forms of protest to defend the economic survival of these farms and the region itself,” APROSERPA warned.

In the statement released today, the agricultural association noted that, alongside the request for an urgent meeting, it had sent a technical document titled “Agricultural Diesel: The Energy Cost of Food Production in Portugal” to the ministry led by José Manuel Fernandes.

The document “seeks to demonstrate the scale of the energy costs associated with agricultural production,” the association said, emphasising that “no farmer operates agricultural machinery or consumes diesel for the sake of it.”

“A tractor is not a leisure vehicle. Every litre consumed is a necessary production input for growing food,” the association noted, pointing out that the document presents “an illustrative scenario of an eight-hour workday under high-demand conditions,” based on “consumption figures recorded during standardised OECD tests of two mid-range agricultural tractors.”

Thus, according to the association, “two tractors can consume around 325 litres of diesel in an eight-hour shift”, a volume that “corresponds, purely for illustration, to the amount needed for a light diesel passenger car, with a fuel consumption of 5.5 litres per 100 kilometres (L/100km)—to travel approximately 5,900 kilometres.”

At the average reference price, the document states, “fuel costs amount to around 542 euros for a single day.”

APROSERPA further warned that “the problem extends far beyond the tractor’s fuel tank,” given that “fuel plays a role in soil preparation, sowing, harvesting, the production of cereals and forage, animal feeding, and the transport of produce.”

“Beyond the farm itself, there are ongoing energy costs associated with transport, processing, storage, logistics, and distribution,” the association stated, arguing that “persistent increases in energy costs can ripple through the entire food supply chain.”

According to APROSERPA, this situation “is particularly serious during a season marked by severe drops in dryland cereal production, reducing the availability of farm-grown feed and increasing the economic vulnerability of livestock producers.”

In the document, the association proposes several measures, such as “evaluating an automatic price stabilisation mechanism for marked agricultural diesel” or “temporarily increasing support during periods of exceptional energy cost spikes.”

Furthermore, it suggests “monitoring the prices actually paid by farmers and implementing a differentiated approach that takes into account the specific characteristics of low-density areas.”