Portugal has "a lot of forced agriculture for export"

Portugal currently has a lot of forced agriculture for export, which threatens biological balance, and relies primarily on Asian labor, subject to "detestable circumstances" of over-exploitation, argued former Agriculture Minister António Barreto in an interview with Lusa.

"Today, Portugal, in my opinion, has significantly lost its capacity for agricultural and food self-sufficiency. There's a lot of forced agriculture for export—fruit, berries, blueberries, strawberries, avocados, things like that, which threaten biological and social balance," argued António Barreto.

The former Minister of Agriculture in the first constitutional government, led by Mário Soares, noted that the agricultural workforce in these productions is currently primarily Asian and subject to "detestable circumstances of overexploitation, poor living conditions, and poor social and installation conditions." According to Barreto, this situation is the result of illegal, unregulated immigration.

The sociologist also believes that there will continue to be "pressure" on the sector, given that the type of agriculture practiced, using, for example, greenhouses, requires cheap labor and, therefore, new opportunities are opening up.

"We need to go and see the conditions in which they work [...] and see the conditions in which they live [...]. Well, that's not to mention urban conditions, because in Lisbon, Porto, or Setúbal, there are dozens, hundreds, or thousands of overcrowded apartments. All of this clearly requires treatment, legalization, and care, even to defend the rights of immigrants," he explained. Half a century after agrarian reform, the agricultural world today faces "a real problem" related to the development of social peace.

There is a labor shortage, most people have abandoned the fields, landowners have sold their land or are more interested in tourism, agrotourism, wine tourism, health tourism, and "tourism of this, that, and the other," he noted.

On the other hand, the essence of agriculture is technological, and the Alentejo is occupied by hundreds of thousands of hectares of “super, ultra-intensive” olive groves, which everything leads us to believe “is the wrong solution.”

António Barreto, who was responsible for the 1977 law designed to regulate the agrarian reform process, structuring the conditions for the return of properties to former owners or heirs and paving the way for compensation, also considered that national policy has been giving priority to industry, roads and highways in general, as well as tourism and services, to the detriment of the agricultural world.

"Millions were spent retiring farmers, sending them home as quickly as possible to roam the agricultural world," he stated. The abandonment of the land and the country's interior ended up being a natural consequence of the evolution of societies, but it also reflects the "negligence and indifference" of political power.

As he pointed out, the fires are also a result of this abandonment of the countryside, with the only positive aspect being that mortality rates have been lower. "People are no longer there. They're no longer taking up agriculture," he emphasized.

As of August 19, more than 201,000 hectares had burned in the country (provisional data), more than the area burned in the entire year of 2024.