Spanish fresh produce association Asaja Murcia is calling on the Spanish government to take active steps to encourage more young people to enter the horticultural sector, with the shortage of younger growers becoming ever more apparent.
The Murcia-based organisation said that “more than 60 per cent” of the Spanish region’s growers are now aged 55 or older, with only 10 per cent of Murcia’s producers aged between 30 and 45.
With the majority of the production region’s growers edging closer to retirement age, Asaja Murcia said it was now a “prority” that more young people became involved in the sector, in order to “rejuvenate the social fabric” of Murcia’s horticultural sector.
In a statement, the organisation’s general secretary, Alfonso Gálvez Caravaca, demanded that the Spanish government becomes “much more involved in the rejuvenation” of the sector to give “greater impetus” to an important area of the Murcian economy.
