While many might associate the Canary Islands with beach holidays and winter sun, agricultural trade relations between our nations have far more resonance historically.
Procured to compliment UK tomato-growing seasons, tomatoes from Tenerife and Gran Canaria feature in the UK market from late autumn right through the winter, and this has been the case for over a century. While today the fruit docks at Southampton, it is a well-known fact that Canary Wharf in London gets its name from the early fruit shipments coming from the Islands.
The consistent quality of their fruit has aided Canary Islands’ exporters over the years. The area benefits from warm temperatures 12 months of the year, getting an average of 2,500 hours of sunshine annually. Away from the crowded beaches and apartment blocks, the unaffected Canary Islands landscape ranges from mountains and rolling hillsides to green hidden valleys and desert planes, and it is among this highly fertile volcanic landscape the islands tomato crops are cultivated.
To compliment the well-suited growing conditions, producers on the Canaries have high quality standards. Most growers are AENOR certified and have made conscious moves to ensure all produce and practices are benchmarked to European standards and packhouses meet retailer requirements. Many have also made positive moves to reduce pesticide use through integrated pest management (IPM) and one researcher from Co-operativa Agricola Guía de Isora, Tenerife, was even trialling the use of herbs, to attract tigerfly, a natural predator of whitefly which is a common tomato pest.
But for some, the last few months have been challenging. Recently it has been the turn of Canary Islands’ growers to feel the impact of extreme weather. In November, tropical storm Delta swept across the Islands ripping off rooves, leaving structures flat and shredding greenhouses and the crops inside them. Tenerife, accounting for 40 per cent of the Islands’ total tomato production, was the worst hit in terms of agricultural damage, and growers and officials are still counting the cost of the disaster.
Fortunately tomato volumes were up preceding Delta’s unwelcome visit. This means that while many crops have been lost to the storm, the total volumes are likely to be similar to that of last year. But while growers say they are able to recover from this setback, many think a far more serious disaster is pending - one of global competition.
Since a bumper export figure of 370,000 tonnes was recorded in 1996, volumes of tomatoes shipped to the UK and the continent have experienced a steady decline. Competition from Morocco, Egypt, Poland, Turkey, Senegal and mainland Spain are emerging and cutting themselves a piece of the Canaries’ export pie.
Growers protest that supermarkets looking for low prices over quality are to blame.
Jesus Manuel Luis Cruz is president of Allfru, a cooperative made up of 10 members. His farm, Agricola Luz Teno, is part of Teno national park Tenerife, which is now protected.
Cruz has been producing tomatoes for the UK market since the business was set up in 1965 and now exports half of his crop of Dorothy and Marcela varieties to UK shores. He has recently spent considerable time and money on the refurbishment of facilities to meet the exacting demands required from UK retailers. He says this past year has been the toughest in the 45 years he has worked in the industry: “It’s not just the storm,” he says. “That did damage but it’s the general trading situation that’s doing the real harm. We had about 10 per cent of our crop affected by Delta, but it’s a minor concern compared to everything else we are worried about.”
Cruz says competition between countries simply means retailers are forcing growers to sell their crops at increasingly low prices. The price paid for crops this year matches the prices he received in the 1960s when he started - he often operates at a loss, which he says is simply not sustainable. “In the old days, if the cost was £3, the supermarket would pay £4 but now it’s gone the other way. They are undercutting all the time.” Without any subsidies or policy change, he says he could only continue supplying to the UK for another two years at most.
Aldeana, a private tomato producer in La Aldea de San Nicolás, Gran Canaria, is now a rare example of a business managing to stay independent while the rest of the island has consolidated into private companies and co-operatives. Like many other growers, exporting to UK markets has powerful historic significance for brothers Juan Antonio and Silvestre Angulo Amador, whose father set up the business in 1930. The company supplies around 40 per cent of its total five million kilo annual volume to the UK and has been working with Sainsbury’s for over 30 years.
It grows, among others, two exclusive brands of tomato - Sun Tom and Esmerelda, and Juan Antonio says he thinks the fact the company is private means it can offer superior quality products to clients. However, he concedes that times are particularly hard. Production costs are increasing all the time, labour costs are going up and fundamentally, the cost of living is higher these days: “We produce a very good product, but the market has to pay for that extra quality,” says Silvestre. “While we used to be able to absorb these extra costs, the competition from north Africa is making it increasingly difficult.
“We have all been losing money this year. We are not optimistic. The prices slightly improve as volumes drop off, but if it goes on this way, what’s the future going to be?”
Juan Antonio says that while competition is an issue affecting many industries, he feels that in fresh produce, not everyone operates on a level playing field. Some of the countries providing the fiercest competition are those that have lesser standards in terms of safety, hygiene and labour-force ethics, he alleges. Cruz explains that other countries may be able to produce tomatoes at a much cheaper price, but believes it is at a cost. If he were to reign in his outlay to try and salvage some profit, he says the quality would undoubtedly suffer. For example, he says workers being paid less would care less about quality and handling.
With 8,500 people dependent on the industry created by tomato exports in Gran Canaria alone, a downturn in profits will no doubt have a direct impact on the local economy. Here, the growers claim, workers are local people who are well looked after. In other countries, one grower said, employees get little more than feeding. “People also need to start to think about responsible consumption. They need to think about the environmental cost of food and also what’s the point in buying cheap tomatoes from places when it is at the cost of people working for next to nothing,” says Pepe Franco, president of Co-operativa Copaisan, also in La Aldea de San Nicolás. Franco explains they were the first growers on the Island to produce cherry tomatoes, but have switched to standard varieties as competition from growers in Kenya meant they could not compete on price.
A solution to the problems that these growers are facing does not come easy. Many, like Copaisan, are looking long-term at diversifying risk by venturing into other markets: papayas, cucumbers and other salads. Others are sticking with tomato production but investigating expanding into new and niche varieties that might demand a more substantial profit margin.
José Carlos Ortiz is president of the Canaries’ main tomato producer Bonny, based in Gran Canaria. He says prices are starting to pick up this season, although it has been tough so far. Bonny also benefits from also being the Islands’ main cucumber producer, and Ortiz says it could also be reverting to other markets it has targeted in the past: “Tesco and Sainsbury’s are interested in going again with peppers and beans, but beans demand a lot of people, which makes it hard. Once we’ve abandoned a product it’s very difficult to pick it up again,” he says.
Cruz agrees that a transition to other types of fresh produce would not be easy. The site he has recently built is for producing and packing traditional tomatoes; a change now would be tantamount to throwing away that investment. Other growers likely see setbacks on the horizon too. A move towards cherry tomatoes is far more labour intensive, and even if growers committed to the change, adapting their equipment and employing more people; there is no guarantee of returns being much better than those they are currently getting.
Some growers are also trying to find success in organic markets. Exporting 30 per cent of his organic crops to the UK, Juan Pedro Gonzalez from co-operative Abona in Arico, Tenerife, says he started growing organic tomatoes 10 years ago in the hope of securing better margins, but again, competition from countries like Morocco means prices have levelled off.
Perhaps the solution is for people in the UK to be encouraged to eat more tomatoes? “No,” Franco says. “People should eat less, better-quality tomatoes. We need to look at it differently.” He thinks if consumers were encouraged to eat better tasting produce instead of cheaply-produced products, Canary Islands’ exports would be in great demand. “It’s difficult for growers at the moment - especially because of the price issue,” says Franco. “Prices have yo-yoed and the are still doing so. If [growers] knew the average price would be stable, they could work out whether it was feasible, but the fluctuation puts them in a disadvantaged position.”
As well as trying to expand into other markets, Copaisan has another trick up its sleeve. Le Aldea de San Nicolás is a protected area and the co-operative could gain status for produce produced under a protected geographical indicator. This, it hopes, will help to differentiate it in the marketplace as all the tomatoes from the co-operatives’ members could be marketed under one brand name. However, at the moment, Franco says this is a long-term outlook and it is still very much in the research phase.
In the short-term, producers are working with the Foods From Spain to promote tomatoes across the UK retail sector. Over the last year, projects have included free recipe books with packs of tomatoes and poster campaigns, as well as advertising in the trade and national media.
While the view on precisely where responsibility for the industry’s decline lies varies from one person to the next, the sad fact is that although inevitably growers want a successful business, a genuine motivator for many is the idea of continuing a tradition. Like any family-run business that has been built up over generations, producers want their companies to progress in the markets that were so important to their families.
Perhaps the answer is a united effort - one umbrella brand for Canary Island tomato growers, something to distinguish the produce from their competitors. “It has been talked about on a political level,” Franco reveals. “But when business is good no-one wants it, it is only when it’s bad they start to talk about it.”
For now though, most growers say they are going to continue to try and work through the tough climate facing them, perhaps in the hope that their customers in the UK will wake up to the fact they produce a quality product for which it is worth paying a premium.
Ortiz is optimistic Canary Islands’ tomatoes will continue to play some part UK winter consumption: “In the future the only thing we can use is quality. If we continue in this we will have a market there.”
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