convert to the Spanish traditional beekeeping in UNESCO Intangible Heritage It looked like a chimera. However, after collecting 110,000 signatures and with the endorsement of 16 autonomous communities, several hundred beekeepers from all over Spain will defend their candidacy in front of the Ministry of Culture, coinciding with World Bee Day, which is celebrated today May 20.
Behind the initiative Enric Simó, a Valencian beekeeper and bee veterinarian who never thought the idea would go this far. With the offices in front —and in front— Simó not only talks about this candidacy, still green, since it needs a validation of Patrimony, but also about the problems that lie in wait for beekeeping.
Large multinationals, bloody distribution, fighting climate change or fighting intensive agriculture that follows making use of toxins that exterminate bees they are some of the workhorses of their day to day life.
With a certain optimism, Simó —and his 25 years of experience— is not intimidated and responds firmly as spokesperson for the beekeepers in the COAG cooperative.
In between, approach the Ministry of Culture to make beekeeping a UNESCO Intangible Heritage of Humanity. A complex challenge, since it would only mean positioning Spanish beekeeping within this category and that, explains Enric, has caught “this week the ministry a little crooked, but for a matter of procedure.”
Although may sound a toast to the sun for the complexity of the procedure, beekeepers have already managed to generate a noise that can come in handy to demand better conditions.
“We believe that it could be an initiative of several European countries. At the moment it has to start in Spain, which has already started, and It would be even more viable if several European countries were added.“, clarifies Enric, meanwhile, he also focuses on what they expect from politicians.
Beyond this demand tinged with romanticism, but endorsed by more than 110,000 signatures and with 15,000 supporting beekeepers, Enric Simó asks the institutions “to implement a viability plan for beekeeping because, if we continue this decline, in ten years there will be half the number of beekeepers left”.
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It is not about empty words or a request that is simply asking for the sake of asking. Enric is clear about the sector’s workhorses. “There are five pillars: support for ancestral and respectful beekeeping; prohibition of higher potency toxicants against bees; encourage the incorporation of young beekeepers; investigate and support the investigation of beekeeping health and, above all, persecute the frauds of imported honeys that flood the market and that demand the same from them as the Spanish beekeeper, especially in labelling”, they summarize.
It is not a minor task, because despite some conquests that the Spanish beekeeping world has achieved in recent years, they are still small skirmishes that have to be waged as David against Goliath against the agri-food industry.
He speaks of the example that practically any honey we consume is Chinese or of affronts such as “Until a year ago, it put different countries on the label“. Now, as a Pyrrhic victory, it is allowed to put “countries of the European Union or outside the European Union”.
It also accuses lax legislation that allows labeling that leads to misunderstandings, such as the one that allowed “by using 1% of honey from Spain to add honey from Spain”. Not without controversy, it also criticizes the triangulation of merchandise that occurs in ports, where through relabeling or several trips, “some honeys arrive as Chinese but in a matter of several trips, they end up becoming European.” She sums up Enric that it is “like the miracle of the loaves and fishes, but with honey”.
The contest is not exempt from battling with the final consumer, although he is less guilty than it seems, but after all it is about convincing how to reach a user loaded with demonized information about sugars and, in essence, a honey does not cease to be a certain way of consuming sugar.
To do this, Simó’s ideas not only focus on honey being “a food treasure”, but above all on the added value of its production. “When you buy local honey, you are helping a producer, but also to produce food and biodiversity. The bee is the most important species in the world.”
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In between, the slab of climate change, capable of changing weather conditions and leaving producers exposed. 2022 endorses it perfectly, since we come from cold and rainy March and April, which hardly stopped working, and now, Enric Simó clarifies, “we are going to a May with a heat wave that can end the rest of the blooms”.
In between, the increase in diesel costs, a reduction in production of 50% and the same for losses per hive, also close to the middle of the ‘cabin’. For this reason, it puts a face to the great enemy of bees: “the black beast of bees is environmental toxins such as pesticides used in seeds or the chemical backpack pool with which we poison ecosystems,” he laments.
Images | istock
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