The provision of food aid for animals in areas affected by wildfires comes following a letter from the Confederação de Agricultores de Portugal (CAP) calling for solidarity among associations.
In response, farmers from the Grândola region managed to gather, “in an initial phase,” eight truckloads of food aid, explained Luís Rodrigues Dias, president of the Grândola Farmers Association, today to the Lusa news agency.
“CAP launched the initiative and, as before, we joined, talked to our members and, to the extent possible, managed to gather, in the first phase, these eight trucks,” he said.
The first truck departed this morning towards the district of Guarda, with two more scheduled to leave this Thursday afternoon, according to Dias.
The remaining trucks will be dispatched “gradually” in the coming days, as “a modest help to those who are currently in great difficulty,” he stated.
“Eventually, others might go to different areas depending on requests and logistical arrangements, but what matters is that this aid reaches those in need,” he added.
The food aid packages “may vary slightly, but they can range between 70, 80, to 90 tonnes,” he mentioned.
“Some trucks carry a little more, others a bit less, with bales [of hay] that are heavier and some that are lighter, but they will be around these figures,” clarified Luís Dias.
The CAP’s letter, accessed by Lusa and dated this Monday, mentioned that the wildfires “affecting rural communities and consuming large grazing areas” pose “a serious problem for many farmers.”
In this context, it urged “availability to help feed the animals threatened” by fires in the north and center of the country, “with the distribution of this aid coordinated with associations and municipal councils” of the affected areas.
The fire that originated in Arganil, in the parish of Piódão, began on the 13th, over a week ago,
It remains active, having spread to six other municipalities in the Interior Centro: Pampilhosa da Serra and Oliveira do Hospital (Coimbra district), Seia (Guarda), and Covilhã, Fundão, and Castelo Branco (Castelo Branco district), burning over 40,000 hectares.
