Farmers have been concentrating on the Boliqueime football field since 9 am, from where they will head towards the EN 125, and tractors with posters reading “Water is life, agriculture is food”, “We will only realise the value of water after the source dries up” or “Our trees need water to bear fruit”.

On a day when rain decided to grace some areas of the Algarve region, in a situation of alert due to drought, Algarve farmers want to demonstrate to the country their opposition to the water management measures applied to the sector, which they consider unfair.

“We are also entrepreneurs like those in tourism, but in tourism, there is no restriction on new investments and in agriculture it is prohibited to have newly irrigated areas”, the president of the Sotavento Algarvio Irrigation Association, Macário Correia, told Lusa.

The former mayor of Faro and Tavira believes that there cannot be “unequal treatment for agriculture in relation to other sectors of activity”, which is why farmers decided to gather today in a protest to demonstrate their discontent.

José Oliveira, from the Algarve Citrus Operators Association (AlgarOrange), also told Lusa that he considers that “there is no equity” in the Government’s measures, as the cuts announced for some sectors “have nothing to do with agriculture”, considering that these could lead to the drought of “many hectares” of orchards.

“We don’t think it’s fair, we think it’s possible to do it another way”, he stressed, adding that farmers are “dissatisfied and outraged” with the measures applied to the sector and that the water problem in the Algarve is not an agricultural problem, but rather of the region and the country.

Slow driving will take place on the EN125, until 14:00pm, between the Maritenda and Quatro Estradas roundabouts, in the municipality of Loulé, in the district of Faro.

The demonstration was called by the recently created Commission for Hydroagricultural Sustainability of the Algarve (CSHA), which intends, on the eve of Sunday's legislative elections, to present some demands considered urgent for the sector, addressed to the next Government.

The commission, which brings together more than 1,000 entities and farmers in the Algarve, argues that, as the rainfall in recent weeks exceeded the executive's estimates, any volume allocated higher than estimated should be “directed to alleviate the cuts imposed on agriculture”.

The Algarve has been on alert due to drought since 5 February, and the Government has approved a set of measures to restrict consumption, namely a 15% reduction in the urban sector, including tourism, and a 25% reduction in agriculture.

In addition to these measures, there are others such as combating losses in supply networks, the use of treated water to irrigate green spaces, streets and golf courses, or the suspension of the granting of titles for the use of water resources.

The Government has already admitted to increasing the level of restrictions, declaring a state of environmental emergency or calamity, if the measures now implemented are insufficient to address water scarcity in the region.

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