Farmers and livestock breeders who produce waste must be registered in the Balearic Islands' Waste Production and Management Registry to be able to treat it. Registration grants an Environmental Identification Number (NIMA) and costs 51 euros. Without this number, the company awarded the plastic collection contract cannot collect the manure, nor can it be delivered to TIRME (the Balearic Islands' waste management company). This requirement, imposed by the national waste law passed in 2022, means "more bureaucracy for farmers, with a giant trap," laments Joan Gaià, coordinator of Unió de Pagesos (Farmers' Union). However, he believes the initiative is good if all the collected plastic is recycled, because "if all this fuss is just to end up burning the plastic, it's just asking for trouble." In this regard, he points out that plastic is still currently used as fuel, so "companies have no incentive to recycle it." Furthermore, he refers to the difficulty some farmers are having registering. "They'll have to hire people to do it for them," he says. The cost of registration must be borne by everyone, although producers who generate less than 1,000 tons of non-hazardous waste per year will not have to pay the fee established by the state waste regulations.

The craft beer sector in the Balearic Islands is going through one of its most delicate periods after years of hard work and the boom of a decade ago that boosted sales and the industry. Far from the image of expansion that characterized the years before the pandemic, small producers and brewers report a continuous decline in consumption and are struggling against increasingly burdensome and restrictive regulations. They denounce that this crisis has led to the disappearance of many historic brands and is constantly suffocating those that remain. "We haven't recovered from what we had before COVID, not by a long shot," warns Miquel Amorós, founder and owner of Mallorca Beer Co., a company that currently produces in an emblematic location that was once another industrial site: Menestralia, in Campanet. However, the brewer maintains that currently, "every day is a fight to avoid closing down."

The Government set December 31 as the deadline to find a solution for the General Agrarian Association of Mallorca (Agama), that will stop buying milk from producers in Mallorca in 2026However, sources within the Balearic Islands government have explained to ARA Baleares that they have extended the deadline for finding a solution for the dairy plant because "it cannot be done by the end of the year." Even so, they regretted that the original deadline had not been met and justified the delay by saying that the procedures "are slow." The government has not yet decided on a new deadline to definitively clarify Agama's future, although it is expected to be at the beginning of next year. Otherwise, "there will be no room to maneuver or reverse the situation," government sources acknowledged.

In 2024, Mallorca produced 9,708,923 liters of milk, almost three million liters less than in 2020, the year of the pandemic, when the figure exceeded 12.6 million liters. In just four years, production has fallen so sharply due to "the crisis in the dairy industries, mainly inAgama", as explained by the Director General of Agriculture, Livestock and Rural Development, Fernando Fernández.

Se ObradorThe industrial kitchen managed by the Association of Organic Agricultural Production of Mallorca (Apaema), where all kinds of preserves and vegetable products are made, has gone from a difficult situation to increased production and customers in just one year. "We've grown in both members and production compared to last year," confirms Rosa Andreu, head of S'Obrador. Due to the increased production, the facilities "have become too small," Andreu explains. In fact, she admits that Apaema is considering expanding S'Obrador, although she clarifies that "nothing is concrete at the moment." "We know that at some point we'll have to increase its capacity, but we'll see when that happens," she insists.

He Government The Ministry of Agriculture is already preparing the report to withdraw the strategic industrial project designation it granted to Agama twenty months before the dairy announced that it would stop purchasing milk from producers in Mallorca in 2026, according to government sources confirmed to ARA Baleares. "Some meetings are still needed," they added. On December 1, 2023, the Governing Council declared the importance of the project proposed at the time by Damm, the company that owns Agama.

Baltasar Martí sold milk to the General Agrarian Association of Mallorca (Agama) for 42 years. He still remembers how they handled it when he started. "We put it in 40-liter pots and loaded them onto a truck just like the ones used today to transport gravel," he says. He claims that if it were up to him, he would have closed the dairy farm in September of this year. "But Agama made me close nine months earlier than I wanted," he laments.