From the air above, Almería is a sea of plastic that glistens between the mountainous hills and the winding coast, with little hint of the fertile land and vast crops beneath it. The driest region in Europe has seen a revolution in fresh produce production in the latter half of the 20th century, as the barren ground used to portray deserts in Spaghetti Westerns was converted for agricultural use in Andalusia’s ‘green revolution’.
With an average temperature of 19°C, the natural heat is harnessed within the greenhouses that cover every inch of the mile-wide strip of rural land between hills and sea throughout the region’s coastline, producing a huge range of goods from cucumbers, peppers, aubergines, green beans, table grapes, cabbage, lettuce and courgettes to tomatoes and oranges - all sectors it dominates.
But amid widespread consumer ignorance as to the region’s produce and seemingly unfair criticism from countries such as the Netherlands over its standards, Hortyfruta was set up in 2007 to give growers, their co-operatives and trade associations a voice at a global level. The organisation has launched its distinctive Lola logo, the silhouette of a flamenco dancer in yellow on red, to be placed on packaging to promote Andalusian produce in the UK and Germany.
Country of origin labelling has become a hot topic in the food industry, with all the major retailers pushed to prove their sources, but Hortyfruta manager María José Pardo Losilla thinks merely labelling the product as Spanish is too broad. “Even though some people know that certain produce is from Spain, they don’t know about Andalusia and the huge amount of high-quality food that comes from this region. We are investing in educating consumers and the market, and will look to continue doing this in the coming years,” she says. “Hortyfruta is about giving growers a voice; for 40 years, we have been unable to harmonise our agriculture - the growers have been competing and we have not had unity in terms of standards and methods.
“Now, the growers’ representatives can vote every 15 days on issues that affect them, their international image and ultimately the whole of Andalusia.”
The region’s warm winter climate means that it fills a gap in the European market for a wide variety of tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers from October through to March, with melons and watermelons replacing them under the greenhouse roofs until June.
“It is a conscious decision to supply just in this period,” says Pardo. “We would like to provide a full supply all year round, but it does not make sense - we would need cooling systems and extra energy to cover our natural June to September gap on the coast. If we can grow fantastic tomatoes in our natural conditions, then why change?”
Hortyfruta has several main objectives, aside from actively promoting traceability of Andalusian produce, in its fledgling stages. The organisation has put a huge emphasis on standards directly opposing the recent relaxation of EU laws on “monster veg”, which does not conform to regulation length, weight and colour specifications. The organisation has also worked with state government to help migrant workers find employment on Andalusian farms, while ensuring that this does not have a detrimental impact on the local workforce.
Backing the good guys
The biggest stride that Hortyfruta has made is in persuading more than half of all growers in the region (and as much as 95 per cent of its pepper producers) to use biological control.
Pre-empting the consumer recoil on the use of pesticides and the proposed banning of certain crop management products across Europe, Andalusians began to implement the system of using natural processes to kill off pests in 2005. Using creatures such as Amblyseius swirskii and Orius laevigatus, growers have been able, after a short period of 20-40 days, to shun pesticides and almost entirely remove white fly and thrips, which present the main threats to crops in southern Andalusia.
“At first, people were reluctant - they didn’t like seeing insects crawling on their crops when they had been spraying them away for years,” says specialist Jan van der Blom, technical production manager at Coexphal, which studies and tests crops in the region. “But after the first season, when yields went up and the quality of the leaves was still almost perfect at the end of the season, all the pepper growers moved over to biological control and others followed the same route.”
Agrocontrol, a subsidiary of bee specialist Agrobio, supplies integrated pest management to the region. Established in the 2006-07 season, the use of biological control shot up from 1500-hectare coverage to 19,000ha last season, aided in part by subsidiaries from local government, which has backed a reduction in residues.
David Beltrán, production department manager at Agrocontrol, explains that the conversion was a widespread upheaval. “We had to build a compatible, sustainable and integrated model to hold up as an example,” he says. “The Andalusian state government trained technicians and growers, and supplied subsidies to work with the biological control companies.”
Agrocontrol supplies a number of insects that it labels ‘good guys’ to negate the effects of pests including types of moth and aphid, as well as techniques such as using Banker plant, which naturally attracts aphids.
Lola Gómez Ferrón, manager of the Clisol greenhouses outside Almería, is an advocate of the method and has written a book to explain it to children and students. “At first, I did trials on every stage from eggs, larvae and adults on 20 plants across eight greenhouses,” she says. “I have used it for almost eight years and have almost 6,000 visitors a year to see my methods. It is really very simple to let nature take its course, but for a time we were so focused on pesticides that people became nervous about using other methods.
“Everyone knows their own greenhouse and what it needs; I put more ‘good guys’ near the door. You can still control the heat and prevent wind damage by opening the roof sections of the greenhouse, as the insects will not move further than one or two metres, so they cannot get out.”
Andalusia suffered an unusually cold winter in 2008, with volumes of sweet peppers down more than 15 per cent as temperatures hit relative lows of 7-8°C beneath the plastic greenhouse roofs.
“There were so many cloudy days this winter and, commercially, we got stuck at a very low level, as everything takes longer to grow,” says Van der Blom. “Also, we had a problem with low pollination, as when the plant uses up all its energy in producing tomatoes from the flowers the bumblebees begin to starve, without enough energy to fly from one plant to another.”
A further issue affecting the region is the continued competition from Morocco, which is threatening to undercut Spanish producers out of the market with lower wages, export prices and the alleged use of some crop protection products prohibited by the EU. Andalusia, along with Murcia, Valencia and the Canary Islands, has signed a declaration of protest to the EU over negotiations in its agricultural agreement with Morocco, which suggests the North African country may be allowed to export higher volumes to Europe, despite rumours in Spain that it has already exceeded its permitted export quota into the EU.
“It is quite strange for Andalusia not to be the cheapest suddenly,” says Van der Blom. “We have always had so much product that our tomato prices have been unrivalled, but for most tomato growers it has been a dramatic year. This month 3,000-4,000 growers in Almería gathered to protest over the quantity and price of Moroccan product and, although the price has since gone up, there may be more demonstrations.
“We are also facing more competition from Turkey and the Netherlands as they offer year-round tomatoes using artificial heating and lighting - they were hit hard by high energy prices last year, but you can see they are coming back.
“With fierce competition like this, criticism from the Netherlands over our methods can really damage our reputation and we are hoping Hortyfruta can redress this.”
Almería has also come in for criticism as the plastic that pervades its landscape is perceived as unsightly and far from environment-friendly. However, a recent study based on NASA satellite data supports the hypothesis that the greenhouses have a positive effect on global warming. The cooling effect on local climate following the land-use change towards greenhouse farming is 12 times more intense than warming associated with the increase of greenhouse gases. The research, by Professor Dr Pablo Campra from the University of Almería, explained that there is a similarity between the reflective surface of polar ice and plastic flat greenhouses, which is described as the “albedo effect”, whereby a higher proportion of solar radiation is sent back to space from this type of land cover with a higher ‘albedo’, or reflective, effect.
Working together
The co-operative system is rarely so widespread as it is in Andalusia, where five of the largest producer co-ops signed up to Hortyfruta represent more than 80 per cent of growers in the region, while six trading ‘auctions’ (associations) further display the unilateral strength of agriculture in the region.
The La Palma co-operative is the largest producer of cherry tomatoes worldwide and has a facility to reflect this on the Motril coast. Harnessing the rich winter season conditions near the Mediterranean, the 35-year-old co-operative also sources produce from the mountains to provide a year-round service that has attracted high-profile customers such as Sainsbury’s, Tesco, The Greenery and even entertainment giant Disney, which has endorsed its packaging on a kid’s range.
La Palma’s 525 members grow 51,000 tonnes of produce, spanning 550ha and providing a living for 3,000 families through cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans and a small amount of exotic cherimoya. Despite La Palma’s projected €120 million (£108.5m) turnover (up from €81.4m in 2007-08), president Pedro Ruiz says it faces an uphill battle. “In the past, exports to the UK have been around 50 per cent of business, but last year this dropped to seven per cent because of the exchange rate and competition from countries such as Morocco, where quality assurance is not guaranteed. In Andalusia, we are not used to not being the cheapest and we are losing out as we want to maintain our quality, traceability and shelf life.”
There can be little doubt about the traceability credentials of La Palma and its peers, with grower codes, designated locations of pallets in the packhouse and radar-emitting balls to track every delivery of product from growers’ hand to packet. This tracing system allows any banned products or quality issues to be traced back to a particular grower and, if necessary, lead to expulsion from the co-operative.
Ruiz insists that growers are never better placed than within a co-operative. “We cover all the main issues for them,” he says. “We do the seed selection; design the packaging; negotiate over plastic, seed, insect and fertiliser supplies; and provide lists of outlawed and available pesticides, which we narrow to our own needs.”
“Organisations such as GlobalGAP can be wary about co-ops and they have demanded that all growers must be able to be contacted independently, but we do more than 3,500 tests and spot checks a year ourselves, so we have our own standards to uphold.”
The co-op has international ingenuity and this is reflected in initiatives such as the new Slito tomatoes, which produce 20 per cent less waste than on-the-vine product.
Ruiz is very enthusiastic about La Palma’s partnership with Hortyfruta. “The main reason for us [to be in Hortyfruta] is the origin labelling; it is what the consumer wants and what we want,” he says. “Lola will be perfect for us and the process of implementing it could not be more simple.”
Despite this unity across the region, the heads of five of the main bodies in the area had never met before last Tuesday’s meeting, hosted by Hortyfruta, in a luxurious restaurant in Granada overlooking the historic Alhambra Palace. The debate at the round table ranged from the region’s international image and the methods that their growers can use, to relations with state-level government.
Gustavo Ródenas Díaz, director of the Faeca Granada co-op, says: “It is a fact that this is the first time that we have had dinner together and Hortyfruta is the reason behind this and an example for the future. There is no future without such a concentration of effort and it is a proven technique that working together produces the best results, as we start to think of the whole region and our position internationally. Personally, I think Almería always gets a lot of focus - Granada has not been the pride of Andalusia and I see this as a chance to step out from its shadow.”
José Muñoz, president of the Ecohal Granada trade union, says: “It is a reality, not a dream - this is something that has always been in demand and there will always be arguments and differences, but at least there are opportunities to talk about them now. After 40 years, it is better late than never and, as a region, we feel strong.”
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