The Regional Secretary for Agriculture and Rural Development, Humberto Vasconcelos, announced during his visit to Jardim da Serra yesterday, that Regional Directorate technicians are on the ground assessing the damage caused by last Saturday’s storm.
While talking to journalists he said: “We are analysing the losses, but we already know that hail has caused damage to some crops, so if necessary, the Regional Government (RG) will provide financial assistance, as farmers who suffer production losses through no fault of their own, cannot be left without an income.”
Once the reports are in, the Regional Government will open a specific support measure to help off-set the storm crop losses. Talking about this, Humberto Vasconcelos confirmed that the RG “will always have funds available, even from the Budget itself, to help with this type of situation. We are already providing financial assistance to several agricultural sectors including cherry growers and Anona producers and now, hail affected crops. It varies year on year. Agriculture is an open skies industry and as there are more and more of these unexpected events, what we advise is that crops be safeguarded by insurance. And, in this sense, we are going to lower the minimum loss to 20% of production, so that we can help more farmers.”
Samantha Gannon
info at madeira-weekly.com
