Agricultural landscape

The project

The need to preserve the environment of the Balearic Islands is, nowadays, one of the main ways to achieve sustainable development and a healthy, balanced and durable economy. The maintenance of the landscape and agricultural activities are fundamental in order to achieve this development model, which is especially important for the country, taking into account the fragility and the difficulties of the agricultural world in island environments.

The project consists of two differentiated actions that share the common objective of maintaining the current agricultural landscape. Both of the following actions consist of providing financial aid to farmers and land owners within the European regulatory framework for aid:

• Measure 1: the first measure consists of offering aid for the construction of boundaries, dry walls, hedges and enclosures. It is about financially supporting those farmers and land owners who want to restore their boundaries or dry walls. It will also enable the planting of ecological hedges and enclosures with cattle grids for the protection of crops.

• Measure 2: the second measure consists of offering aid for the replanting of dry-land trees (almond, carob, fig, olive or apricot) that are traditional to our islands and crops that are severely punished by drought and climate change, and recently also affected by new pests with significant negative effects.

Most of the benefits of the project are not directly economic ones; rather they will mainly affect the environment and tourism, and improve the quality of life and leisure activities of residents. The aspects more directly linked to production, and as such the economy, can be divided into two groups: those related to the renewal of plants that will allow changes in cultivated species or varieties focused on improving productivity, adapting to climate change or fighting the plague of Xylella fastidiosa; and those related to the improvement of water infiltration and the fight against erosion that is taking place in the margins and terraces of the mountains and that provide us with the most important reservoirs of drinking water of our islands.