“Despite the efforts made by the PS governments, and while Portugal has significantly increased its export share from the agri-food sector, we are still about 70% dependent on the food we consume,” stated José Luís Carneiro. “The focus and enhancement of the agricultural and forestry sector is one of our major priorities, as investing in this sector means reducing the country’s external dependency in terms of food autonomy.”
In Póvoa de Varzim, in the Porto district, attending the 11th edition of AgroSemana—Norte Agricultural Fair, José Luís Carneiro emphasized that this sector “must be one of the national political priorities.” He asserted that “support must be provided to cooperatives across the country” to achieve this goal.
“A national project must be developed aimed at capacity building, enhancing associative work and cooperation throughout the cooperative sector network, ensuring training and price structure monitoring for goods originating from the primary sector,” he added.
Referring to the Platform for Monitoring Relations in the Food Chain (PARCA), the socialist leader noted that there has been a “lack of work” in this area.
“PARCA is an instrument for monitoring and regulating how price is formed and evolves between the producer and consumer, but the information we have indicates that there has been a lack of work by its responsible parties and the Ministry of Agriculture itself to ensure it meets and fulfills its mission,” he mentioned.
José Luís Carneiro highlighted “levels of social injustice that need to be corrected.”
“It is necessary to introduce mechanisms for observation, verification, and correction of price formation structures to ensure greater fairness between producers and the rightful gains of distribution. There must be a better distribution of these results in a sector that today represents a significant share of our national wealth,” he concluded.
