"We have to do something fundamental to improve the marketing conditions for agricultural production", said Arlindo Cunha to the Lusa agency.

The former Secretary of State for Agriculture also recalled that "the cooperatives are all over the Portuguese territory, but "most of them do not sell the farmers' products".

"I think it was very important to work with them, through support and conditions, so that they can have more proactive work in marketing the products", defended Arlindo Cunha, adding that this "would imply qualification of resources, hiring of specialized professionals and making some investments".

In his opinion, in some cases, it would imply concentration or merger programs for cooperatives, because "the gains of scale are one of the important dimensions" of this work.

"In Portugal, we have good cooperatives, some work very well. We even have an exemplary case, which is the dairy sector, in which the cooperatives created a public limited company with capital exclusively from them, which does all the vertical integration of the dairy product, which is Lactogal", he stressed.

This success story "ensures from production to final sale and transformation" and "has about 60% of the Portuguese milk market", he added.

According to Arlindo Cunha, in the large countries of the European Union where agriculture is very strong, such as the Netherlands, Denmark, France, Germany and Spain, "cooperatives are the sector that weighs the most in the final marketing of agricultural products", functioning "almost like private companies".

"Here we have very unequal situations. We have the milk and we also have some reasonable organization in the wine sector. But then, in many other sectors, in most of them, we do not have it", lamented the also president of the Regional Viticulture Commission of Dão.

In this context, he defended "an analysis of the role that cooperatives can play at the marketing level in the territory" and that "an effort be made to help them gain scale, recruit human resources and create conditions so that they can take a step forward in marketing".

Another bet that Arlindo Cunha defends is in local markets and in short supply chains, so that products such as vegetables and fruits do not have to arrive in Portugal from the other side of the world.

"We have a distribution structure that is very much based on large international entities and this favors the globalization of marketing, but things are changing", he considered, recalling what happened during the covid-19 pandemic, "in which the supply chains were cut", and also the conflicts in Europe.

On the other hand, "today one of the top issues on the political agenda is decarbonization and meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement" and, for this, it is very important that products can be produced and consumed locally and regionally, he added.

For Arlindo Cunha, "there is a lot of work to be done in terms of organizing this local production chain versus local and regional marketing", because, although the municipalities are working on this, "it deserved a more comprehensive national approach".

Another issue that concerns him is the fact that, in Portugal, less than 4% of farmers are under 40 years old, which he considers "very worrying".

"All governments say that it is a priority to support young people, but the fact is that 24 years ago, in 2000, we had 9.5% of young farmers, under 40 years old, and today we are at 3.7/3.8%", he lamented.

Arlindo Cunha also defended the need to "do an exercise in simplifying the bureaucracy" in the application of the Strategic Plan of the Common Agricultural Policy (PEPAC).

"There is a lot of bureaucracy in the way that investment projects that are candidates or in environmental measures that are now an important part of agricultural policy are analyzed and decided. The so-called eco regimes, for example, are very complicated, therefore, there has to be a simplification in this matter", he considered.

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