As the Regional Legislative Assembly resumes after the summer recess, agriculture has become one of the first major political battlegrounds. Rising fuel and fertilizer costs, falling milk prices and delayed support payments brought government and opposition face to face with a question that reaches beyond party politics: how can the Azores preserve farming when the cost of producing continues to rise while income becomes increasingly uncertain?
The fields did not take a parliamentary vacation. While deputies were away from the chamber, cows still had to be fed and milked, tractors fueled, pastures maintained and bills paid. It was therefore fitting that when the Legislative Assembly of the Azores returned to work in Horta, one of its first urgent debates concerned the condition of agriculture and the rising structural costs confronting the primary sector. The debate, requested by the PS/Azores, revealed considerable disagreement over the adequacy and timing of government action, but also a broad recognition across parties that farming and fishing are experiencing a particularly difficult period. Recent reductions in milk prices and September’s increase in agricultural diesel have intensified pressure on farm profitability.
Regional Secretary for Agriculture and Food António Ventura defended the coalition government’s record, describing the primary sector as an “absolute political priority.” According to figures presented by the Government, its decision to prevent structural reductions in European agricultural programs avoided what it calculates would have been €145 million in lost POSEI, PRORURAL+ and PEPAC support. The Executive also outlined a series of fuel and livestock compensations, including support linked to agricultural diesel consumption and further assistance planned for the second half of the year. The Government points additionally to the removal of individual ceilings on agricultural diesel consumption—a policy previously announced for 2025—and says it has used regional financing to supplement European programs and prevent reductions in payments to producers.
The opposition’s argument is less about whether millions have been announced than about when those millions actually reach farms. Socialist deputy Patrícia Miranda said producers need concrete responses rather than commitments that take too long to materialize. The PS points to feed costs it says have risen about 26 percent over six years, fertilizer costs by more than 193 percent and colored diesel by 163 percent. It also says the average milk price has fallen by seven cents per liter, reducing farm revenue by an estimated €27 million. Miranda recalled the PS proposal for a 15-cent-per-liter fuel subsidy and the Milk Price Guarantee Fund announced by the Regional Government in 2024 but which, she argues, has yet to provide the promised response. “The Government does not control the markets,” she said, “but it controls what depends on it.”
One of the sharpest disputes concerns money expected from Lisbon. Socialist representatives raised the €23 million included in the State Budget to compensate Azorean agriculture for additional costs, asking when an agreement between the governments of the Republic and the Region will finally permit its transfer. Parliamentary leader Berto Messias acknowledged that the previous national government had failed to resolve the matter, while arguing that the current government must now implement Article 143 of the State Budget. As of September 15, according to the PS, no concrete transfer date had been provided. These are politically contested questions of responsibility: the Regional Government has itself criticized delays by the Republic, while the PS argues that announcing support has little meaning to a farmer until the money reaches the farm.
The governing parties defended a different reading of recent years. PSD deputy Paulo Silveira argued that regional measures have softened what he called the sector’s “complex challenges,” citing the decision not to impose reductions on agricultural aid, the 2023–2028 Strategic Partnership Agreement and changes extending or liberalizing support mechanisms. CDS parliamentary leader Luís Silveira similarly acknowledged the severity of present pressures while arguing that they should not erase progress achieved in agriculture. He also widened the debate to fisheries, insisting that environmental protection—including marine conservation—must be accompanied by protection for the fishing communities whose livelihoods depend upon the sea. CHEGA, meanwhile, questioned the distance between the large sums cited by government and the continuing complaints of farmers, arguing that support arriving late creates its own financial crisis for producers.
Behind these competing political narratives is a simpler economic reality. An Azorean farmer cannot postpone buying feed because a government transfer is delayed. Fuel must be purchased when the tractor needs it; fertilizer when the land requires it; wages, electricity and loans when they fall due. A subsidy announced today but received months later may still have value, but it does not solve the same problem as money available when the bill arrives. That distinction between announced support, authorized support and money actually received may become one of the most important measures by which agricultural policy is judged during the coming parliamentary year.
The debate also exposes something deeper about farming on islands. Agriculture in the Azores is simultaneously an economic activity, a source of food, a guardian of landscape and one of the remaining anchors of rural communities. Insularity magnifies the cost of inputs and transportation, while global markets influence prices that individual farmers cannot control. Public policy cannot determine the international price of fertilizer or dictate what processors pay for milk. It can, however, determine whether approved support is predictable, whether infrastructure is maintained, whether bureaucracy moves at the speed required by businesses, and whether island-specific costs are adequately recognized.
And so the most revealing question of the parliamentary debate may have been the simplest: if so many millions are being mobilized, why are farmers still complaining?
There may be more than one answer. But in the pasture, politics eventually loses its abstractions. The farmer cannot feed a herd with a resolution, fuel a tractor with a press release or pay an invoice with a promise. For agriculture, as for the land itself, what matters is not what has been announced. It is what finally arrives.
Com base em uma história no Correio dos Açores: Natalino Viveiros, diretor. Photo from CA.