or Spanish growers the drought is an increasingly worrying problem, and nowhere more so than in the south. Dried-up plantations and crops that aren’t worth harvesting are scenarios that sadly have become reality for vast numbers of Andalusian farmers.
The government has approved interest-free loans for a period of one year for the purpose of modernisation and getting the younger generation involved in agriculture, as well as financial compensation to land owners affected by this year’s drought.
Miguel Blanco, secretary general of COAG, an organisation of Spanish growers and farmers, thinks the latest measures put in place to deal with the drought are “absolutely necessary” but “totally insufficient” in terms of the “irreversible” situation in the farming sector, which has so far made an estimated loss of around €500 million.
The agricultural sector is set to make a loss of over a billion euros if the drought continues.
Blanco has signalled that the adopted measures are worth roughly €10m, whereas €80m was allocated to help the sector cope with the drought in 2005. Bearing in mind that the sector creates 1.2m jobs, it is felt that more funds could have been made available.
The drought has come on the back of a difficult 2011 in which Andalusian growers - alongside those in all of Spain and elsewhere - suffered the impact of wrongly being pinpointed during the E. coli affair, and concerns about how to succeed in such a tough environment is transcending all crop groups in the region.
At the global asparagus congress, Euro Asper, in Granada last month for instance, future challenges and how to overcome them were the top points on the agenda. Organised by Asociafruit (the association of producers and exporters of fruits and vegetables in Andalusia) and the European Federation of Asparagus Producers, the conference identified Eastern Europe as a particular emerging market.
Andalusia produces over 78 per cent of Spanish asparagus - some 44,000 tonnes - and it is an industry worth €167.6m. Some 6,000 tonnes are exported, but exports to other European countries have halved, and according to Asociafruit it’s due to Chinese and Peruvian price wars.
“There is strong support for locally grown produce at the moment, for bringing fresh produce to the major brands, and this is an area where European growers are especially competitive and known for our high quality,” says Thierry Jean, president of Asociafruit. “In the last few years there has been a move away from asparagus production, with 40 per cent less land dedicated to the crop, especially in Andalusia where white asparagus production is gradually replaced by green. This decline is due to the growing difficulty in exporting the product to the European market as a result of aggressive price wars driven in particular by Chinese and Peruvian exporters. The only way to reverse this negative trend is therefore to differentiate our product by its superior quality,” he added.
Asociafruit is not the only organisation that has felt the effects of ongoing price wars.
Fernando Martin, director of grower co-operative Procam, echoes these sentiments. “The main problem we have at the moment is price levels, due to the competition from Morocco and other developing countries,” he says, adding that working conditions and salaries are very different in the two countries. “It particularly affects products like cherry tomatoes and green beans, products that require a lot of manual labour. Fair enough - our prices are higher - but we try to offer superior quality and various certifications like GlobalGAP and others.”
The quality angle is being widely adopted across the industry. “Given that we are increasingly less competitive with countries like Morocco and Turkey, developing our products to differentiate them from the competition, through breeding, packaging and service, is vital,” says Alberto Capitán Jimenez, of berry exporter Euroberry.
“Also, the horticultural sector has to strive to be profitable without relying on EU subsidies, which are increasingly prioritised to new member states,” he adds.
As part of its growth strategy, the company has great ambitions to expand internationally. “We are trying to reach markets with a higher number of potential customers, markets that until now haven’t had much importance to the berry market but in which there are lots of business opportunities, such as Eastern Europe and the Middle East.”
Traditional markets, like the British one, continue to play an important role to Spanish growers and exporters. “The British market continues to be by far the biggest consumer of blueberries in Europe. The German market is certainly growing rapidly but it hasn’t yet reached the level of demand from the British market.”
On home turf the strategy is all about contingency planning. Euroberry has set up a warehouse in Madrid to improve internal logistics and reach new clients that only need small quantities. In addition, they are working on a long-running campaign with a network of collaborating retailers to promote blueberry consumption at the point of sale.
It is clear that investment and innovation are still seen as vitally important. “Thanks to our breeding programme, we can count on the best varieties in our ongoing quest for quality, selecting the best plants which then produce varieties such as Rocio, which is probably the best blueberry variety in the world,” says Capitán Jimenez. “At the same time, we try to improve the logistics so that the product is delivered in a fresher and better condition and reaches the consumer as soon as possible after harvest.”
The value-added route certainly seems to make sense for a region where growers, according to trade body Hortyfruta in December, are “in grave danger of crashing”. The body, together with Proexport, is pushing the We Care, You Enjoy campaign in the UK and other countries to highlight the benefits of tomatoes, capsicum, cucumbers, lettuce and broccoli from the regions.
It is another initiative that should help reinforce the image of high-quality produce from the Spanish region, but above all, producers will hope the remainder of 2012 passes without
further drama. -
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