Spain pleads for EU crisis funds as drought hits farmers

By JENNIFER O’MAHONY and SERGIO RODRIGO
Associated Press

MADRID (AP) — Spain’s Agriculture Minister Luis Planas has requested emergency funds from the European Union to support farmers and ranchers amid extreme drought conditions in the country’s agricultural heartlands. Planas wrote to the European Commissioner for Agriculture, Janusz Wojciechowski, on Monday to plead for aid for Spain’s 890,000 agricultural workers including money from the bloc’s crisis reserve and unused rural development funds, he said. “There is drought, there are high temperatures, but they are much more accentuated in the case of the Iberian Peninsula,” Planas added following a cabinet meeting, describing the release of financial assistance as of “the utmost importance.”