The heavy rains of recent days have caused damage in some regions, above all the Ribatejo, north of Lisbon and some farmers have seen a significant impact on their spring crops.

Speaking after an audience with Portugal's president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, Santos said that there were “specific measures” to deal with the damage caused by bad weather in the European Union-funded Rural Development Programme (PDR 2020), but that it was first necessary to assess the damage and that was sometimes difficult for small farmers to do in the way required.

“The damages have to be assessed to see what can be done" he said. "If there is no way of using Community funds, we have to study other possibilities," the CNA director said. Crop insurance “is very ill suited” to family farms, he added.

“Those who have a multifunctional farm ends up not being within the parameters for insurers and has great difficulty in having access to insurance," Santos said. Insurance is also generally too expensive "for what it actually insures", as well as being difficult to claim for, he added.

Meanwhile Luís Mira, the secretary-general of Portugal's Farmers' Confederation (CAP) which represents mainly larger farms stressed that the rain “affects some more than others”: while in the Ribatejo it has hit tomato plantations and maize, in the case of pasture and other cereal crops the rain is welcome.

In case of damage by this sort of weather he said insurance is the only option.

Earlier the ministry of agriculture, Luís Capoulas Santos, said that the PDR already included a measure to facilitate access to insurance with between 40% and 80% of premiums funded by state and EU funds.