Spanish growers have called crisis meetings as inclement weather, low prices, lack of water and third-country competition threaten their season.
In the south-eastern region of Murcia, producers highlight that the economic crisis and paucity of water are complicating the start of their 2009 campaign.
According to producers’ association Asaja-Murcia, iceberg lettuce is on of the worst affected lines. Secretary general of the association Alfonso Gálvez Caravaca said: “Despite the good export figures we just announced for last year when the region of Murcia exported 869,770 tonnes of vegetables and salads in the first 10 months of the year - a increase of 11.4 per cent on 2007 - the start of this season has been very slack. Data so far this year is not very encouraging to our growers. The client base is reducing the number of orders and the ongoing economic crisis means that consumption has slowed right down.”
Growers have just been able to quantify how the rains and high winds of last month have affected their produce, and according to Gálvez, it appears to be lettuce that has come off worst. He acknowledged the support that the regional executive continues to afford the sector but called for further action. “We need to develop new initiatives that favour the promotion of our sector in different international markets,” said Gálvez.
Meanwhile, in neighbouring Andalusia, producers’ association Hortyfruta held a meeting of its crisis committee on Monday. The region includes Almería, one of Europe’s major growing area for covered crops, and Hortyfruta singled out tomatoes and capsicum as the sectors experiencing particular difficulty.
Manuel Galdeano, president of the organisation said that arrivals from Morocco and Israel mean that prices for Spanish supplies have been falling an are likely to reach levels that would trigger either “an amber or red alert” for the sector in the next few weeks. “That is why, in an attempt to anticipate this, we are calling on the sector not to send produce to market on consignment without a fixed price,” he said.
Hortyfruta claimed that according to its own research, Morocco has already exceeded its quota and that minimum prices were not being respected either. It also maintained that low-prices and large volumes of capsicum from Israel are likely to cause problems for Spanish senders in the next few weeks.
