The Spanish citrus sector is suffering the worst season in its history, grower representatives said, with farm-gate prices below the cost of production and even marketers reporting a lack of profitability as retailers appear to be the only link in the chain to make gains.
“The main problem is on clementines and other easy-peelers,” said Juan Manuel Peiró, citrus agronomist at producers’ association Ava-Asaja in Valencia. “There is a lot of production this year and sizes are small as a result, so we have a market in oversupply. We have also problems with the weather in Valencia with a period of 20 days of almost unbroken rainfall up to the end of last month. This has damaged a lot of fruit and means people are buying very carefully.”
The hope now for the sector is that this climatic damage will cause fruit to be withdrawn from the market, boosting the price for those growers and co-ops with remaining easy-peelers. “They have also suffered with frosts in Andalusia, so that may decongest the market a little too,” said Peiró.
The varieties in production in early January are Nules and Nova in clementines and Navelina in oranges, and the Navel season is just about to start. “In other years we have had strong prices for these varieties after Christmas, but not this year,” said Peiró, “and there is very little harvesting as prices are too low.”
Peiró also believes that the official forecasts of some 1.9 million tonnes of citrus in the Valencia region to be inaccurate as overproduction is such that he believes the 2m mark has been crossed. “The problem for the market of oversupply has been aggravated by the small sizes, but also a move towards planting more easy-peelers instead of oranges in recent years may be starting to be felt on the market,” he warned.
