Spanish producers have hit out at Europe’s major supermarkets and hard discounters for converting their AAA quality produce into “rubbish” returns.
Growers’ associations umbrella group Coag has found eight Spanish products at the peak of their season for which growers are being paid below production cost.
The Coag list features popular lines tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, courgettes, lettuce, lemons, oranges and apples.
Andrés Góngora, responsible for fruit and vegetables at the organisation, said: “At the height of the season for exports to the EU, farmgate prices are at ruinous levels, intensifying the crisis on prices the sector has been struggling against since the 2008-09 season.”
According to Góngora, some 80 per cent of fresh produce sendings leave Almería, Murcia and Granada for other EU markets in the last quarter of the year and retailers are using a range of excuses for their behaviour.
“The German E. coli crisis, the global finance crisis and non-existent flooding of the market with produce are all being used as a defence,” he said, quoting figures supplied by the agriculture ministry that show in many instances that growers are receiving, on average, half the cost of production for their crops.
The discounters in the UK as well as on the continent come in for the most flak from the Spanish. Góngora said: “We are accusing them directly of employing price-squeezing strategies. They convert our AAA quality produce into rubbish returns.”
He cited Aldi and Lidl as among the worst offenders. “Their policy is always on price,” he said. “But it is not just them, it is Carrefour too, for example. We know that there are some supermarkets in the UK, such as Tesco, that understand about quality, but with the German chains it is the same principle whether their stores are in the UK, Germany or Spain.”
Coag believes the situation is “unsustainable” and that only action from EU authorities will help.
Meanwhile, a strike of citrus workers in Valencia was narrowly averted this week. Trade union UGT-PV announced that an agreement had been reached with employers ahead of the strike scheduled for 28 November amid concerns that workers were being paid up to 40 per cent too little for work, as bosses contract workers through temporary labour organisations.
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