Unicaja and the Unión de Pequeños Agricultores y Ganaderos (UPA) Jaén have signed a new collaboration agreement aimed at improving these professionals’ planning capacity through early access to Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidies.
The initiative allows UPA Jaén’s farmers and livestock breeders to access these funds before their official disbursement, promoting more efficient management of the agricultural season and facilitating decision-making in a context marked by rising costs and the need to optimise investments.
The agreement, signed by Unicaja’s regional manager for Eastern Andalusia, Juan Cayuela, and the deputy general secretary for Organisation and Finance at UPA Jaén, Elio Sánchez, places particular emphasis on the usefulness of the advance as a forecasting tool, enabling work schedules to be adjusted, supplies to be secured and farms to meet their financial commitments with greater flexibility.
Unicaja’s regional manager for Eastern Andalusia emphasised that this type of agreement “goes beyond one-off financing, helping the agricultural sector to organise its activities with greater foresight”. “The aim is to provide farmers and livestock breeders with the certainty they need to plan each season, reducing their dependence on administrative timelines,” he noted.
For his part, the deputy general secretary for Organisation and Finance at UPA Jaén stated that “agreements of this kind serve to facilitate better conditions for the financial transactions that our farmers and livestock breeders need in their day-to-day work. We sign agreements such as this in our ongoing endeavour to seek out all the conditions that improve the situation of UPA Jaén’s members”.
The CAP application period will remain open until 15 May, whilst the advance payment can be arranged until the end of October, thus adapting to the needs of each professional.
Commitment to family farms
Both organisations agree on the need to strengthen tools that provide stability and continuity for farms in Jaén, paying particular attention to family-run farms, which represent an essential part of the province’s agricultural fabric.
In fact, Unicaja maintains a specific line of support for the agri-food sector that includes financing, insurance and solutions tailored to the specific needs of the countryside, as part of its strategy of continuous support for these professionals, whom it places at the heart of its activities.
For its part, UPA Jaén is an organisation focused on defending the interests of professional farmers and livestock breeders, currently with 3,000 members across the province and representing the majority of the agricultural sector: family farms.
