The Spanish lemon sector is facing its deepest crisis in living memory, the director of sector body Ailimpo told FPJ. “There is still 70 per cent of the Fino lemon crop on the trees and the season ends in April,” Ailimpo director José Antonio García said. “It will be impossible to harvest it all.”
The organisation is still trying to find out exactly what has gone wrong. “The Fino forecast was 25-30 per cent up on last year and we also have difficulties in terms of competition from Turkish lemons in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia, Romania, Poland and Ukraine,” said García. But this year there appears to have been a drop in demand too. “We have yet to confirm that this is the case, but so far we have detected an apparent fall in consumption in the UK, France and Germany,” said García. “It does not seem to be the case that Turkey is gaining ground in these countries, rather that uptake has diminished.”
The problems are set to become worse as the Verna lemon crop, which is harvested from April until August, is forecast to be double last year’s levels due to the effects of biennial bearing.
Ailimpo is organising discussions internally among its different member producers, co-operatives, exporters and processors to look at options for the crop in both the short and long term.
“We are considering the possibility of introducing a grubbing programme,” said García. “And in the short term we are building on the excellent relationship we have with our counterparts in Argentina to try and get an agreement that will allow us to have a market for the Verna campaign in May and June and we would give them a clear market for their fruit from July onwards.”
