Spanish farmers with the tractors they were excluded today for second daymajor highways and blocked access to port terminals as the escalating reactions of the industry in the European countryside due to high costs, bureaucracy and competition from non-EU countries.

Outraged by the state of the market and encouraged by similar ones mobilizations in other European countries, Spanish farmers took their tractors out of storage yesterday, two days ahead of planned protests by the country’s main farming unions.

About 12 major highways were blocked across the country yesterday morning, according to traffic authorities.

“Some countries don’t respect the rules, they don’t have quality controls,” says farmer Juan lemon Tree in Andalusia and is barricaded in front of the entrance to its port Malaga.

Current lemon prices have ruined his business this year.

“They don’t want them, not even if I give them away,” he told national network TVE.

Farmers say that the demanding regulations which were imposed on them by the EU for environmental Protection make them less competitive than their counterparts from other regions, such as Latin America or non-EU European countries.

They also protest against the increasingly vague bureaucratic measures imposed on them.

The protests led the Spanish government to hand out an extra €269 million in subsidies to up to 140,000 farmers and the EU to withdraw a bill to halve pesticide use in the bloc, which farmers oppose.