The candidate of Coalición Canaria for the European Elections, Carlos Alonso, and the executive secretary of the primary sector of Coalición Canaria, Narvay Quintero, have announced the objectives of the nationalist formation in the European agricultural sector.

Along these lines, Alonso and Quintero explained that "the remoteness of the Canary Islands has a negative impact on our agricultural sector due to the weight of production costs and the low evolution of prices received by farmers on the islands". This circumstance, Alonso explained, "makes it difficult to have an income of agricultural origin that allows us to face the current costs of living", mainly in agricultural and rural areas. In this context, and within the framework of the current Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the Community Programme to Support Agricultural Production in the Canary Islands (POSEI) represents for the Canary Islands "the most important mechanism to deal with this problem". Traditional crops are the ones that sustain a large part of our agricultural employment, but they face "increasingly unaffordable" production costs. According to Narvay Quintero, "the sector faces the challenge of diversification", which implies the search for new lines within the programme aimed at "covering and bringing together new farmers, responding to the agri-food supply demanded by our society and strengthening our indicators of self-sufficiency and food sovereignty. In addition, the Canary Islands are facing the impact that climate change is having on our region, "with an increasingly variable climate and with episodes of drought that engulf our countryside". And in view of this context and the importance of the sector for the Canary Islands, they explained, "it is absolutely necessary to maintain and review the main agricultural fund for the Canary Islands". The candidate of the Canary Islands Coalition for the European Elections, Carlos Alonso, has referred to the importance of our OR condition to adopt specific measures that contribute to the promotion of the agricultural sector, "as stated in the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU". In this sense, he explained that "POSEI is our main tool for action". However, Quintero pointed out, "the loss of action capacity of the POSEI token is particularly notable in view of how the costs of agricultural activity have increased." Quintero wanted to point out that, based on the Economic Accounts of Agriculture, direct costs have grown by 44.49% between 2007 and 2021 (well above the CPI). He also alluded to the study carried out by the Ministry of Agriculture of the Government of the Canary Islands in 2023, according to which "the extra costs produced in 2022 due to the war in Ukraine on the islands translate into an increase of 90.6% in inorganic fertilisers — €4,939,668 more compared to 2021 – in an increase of 11.2% in expenditure on phytosanitary products or an extra cost of €34,372,425 in feed". Another relevant issue "is the rise in labor costs." An increase that, as detailed, implies that "the unit cost of work has increased between 2009 and 2024". This fact, as they explained, "has an impact on the viability of Canarian agriculture, due to the small size of our farms and the difficult mechanization resulting from our relief". In relation to our farms, the candidate for Europe referred to the decline suffered in the last decade in the Canary Islands, "falling by 19.6% in 2020 compared to the agricultural census of 2009, while the workforce on agricultural holdings has decreased by 24.9%, according to the INE". In addition, the Canary Islands have experienced the loss of approximately 2,200 hectares over the last 10 years, according to regional data from ISTAC, "an area that is equivalent to a loss of more than 5% of arable land". This circumstance implies that "a large part of the loss of farms does not result in an increase in the size of the remaining farms, but rather there is a net loss of productive resources". A fact that deserves to be highlighted is that the Agricultural Area in the Canary Islands SAU, "is around 40,000 hectares, less than half that of 1990". The primary sector is one of the fundamental pillars of our islands, "not only because of its contribution to our economy, but also from the point of view of sustainability and the landscape". In this sense, and in view of the moment that the sector is going through, the candidate of the Canary Islands Coalition to the European Parliament, Carlos Alonso, will propose a series of measures that guarantee the viability and defense of our agriculture against E