António da Encarnação

António da Encarnação, farmer, aged 75

ECO123: What can we do to avoid forest fires in Portugal?
We need young farmers. I love the place where I was born. I love it a lot. I’ve always loved it. I’ve never left it to go anywhere else. The best product that we have in Portugal is medronho. We don’t want a subsidy, we want it to be free like it was in the past. I’m 75, I started distilling when I was 13. The most miserable thing that the Portuguese have got is gathering medronho. It’s very badly paid, there’s a lot of exploitation by the state. Because they make us pay. And we can’t. Everything will be abandoned. Everything will go up in flames, and this will all disappear. What are they doing to us? To the unfortunate Portuguese? It’s enough.

In Portugal there was a time when agriculture was good. Nowadays, it’s no good. There’s nobody who wants to work in agriculture. And whatever’s produced can’t be sold. Nobody buys it. Everything comes from outside in tins to those supermarkets. And later we won’t know how to survive. So. That’s what I think.

The old people have died and the young ones go away to the cities. We stay here, the old folk. Here I used to sell fattened cows, fattened bullocks, fattened pigs. There were potatoes, there was maize, there was cabbage, there were beans. Now it’s me here and someone else over there who’s like me. I still sow a few things. The rest is scrub. With time, there are just brambles. I used to sow food for the cows, potatoes, lots of things. Now, landscape. So who does it? The old people are dying and the young ones don’t want to work …