Spanish fruit and vegetable producers are losing as much as €200m every week as a result of the “serious damage” done to the country’s image in export markets, as a result of the German E.coli outbreak, falsely blamed on Spanish cucumbers.
The regional government of Andalusia estimates that losses suffered by cucumber producers alone since the start of the crisis have already reached €75m, while the eastern region of Valencia said losses, from peppers to potatoes, now totalled €20m.
In Andalusia in particular, which was the recipient of the German allegations, prices paid to growers have tumbled by an average of 50 per cent across categories over the past two weeks, according to national association COAG.
The organisation said a drop in consumption for many products combined with the near stoppage of exports had resulted in prices for products such as courgettes falling from €0.35 to €0.10 and watermelons dropping to €0.21 from €0.45.
Agustín Rodríguez, regional secretary of the Union of Small Farmers (UPA) in Almería, told El País the situation had “become catastrophic” due to the “psychological effect” that the crisis has had on Spanish products as a brand for consumers.
According to COAG, the damage to Spain’s image is likely to lead to the loss of 10,000 agricultural jobs in Almería alone.
Spanish president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero yesterday (2 June) criticised the European Commission for its “slow” response to the crisis and revealed the country would be seeking compensation for the damage caused to the fresh produce sector by the German food safety alert.
Speaking after a meeting held between Spain’s affected autonomous communities and rural affairs minister Rosa Aguilar, Murcia’s agriculture minister, Antonio Cerdá, said the EU needed to take “extraordinary measures” to tackle the “extremely serious” situation that the nation’s growers were facing.
Cerdá said the damage suffered to the sector in his own region had been “brutal”, adding that the recovery was “not a matter of one or two days, but months”.
The UPA urged the European Commission to put in place plans to compensate Spanish growers and the development of a communications and marketing campaign to repair the damage done to the country’s fruit and vegetable exports.
“Now is the time to compensate Spanish vegetable producers who have suffered serious damage, both economically and to their image, and to try to normalise the situation in the market,” said UPA secretary general Lorenzo Ramos.
