Apart from plowing the land, planting crops and blocking roads, tractors also serve to destroy unsold crops.
A crushing machine is attached to them and they are passed over the fruits or vegetables in the field itself.
As José Ángel Morales, a farmer from San Javier (Murcia), says, this is being done right now with tons of lemons in good condition.
“Despite what it has cost to irrigate due to the drought, half of the lemon production goes to waste, it is a shame, they are being thrown to the ground and destroyed,” he laments.
This is what happens when the market for an agricultural product is saturated and prices collapse.
“For me it is a lost year,” says this Murcian farmer, who does not understand that lemons from other countries, cheaper and that meet fewer environmental requirements, are being brought in, while those from here are being thrown away.
When there is no outlet for fruits and vegetables in supermarkets and greengrocers, some products such as citrus fruits are sold at lower prices for juices or other industrial applications, but once these channels also overflow, there are no longer as many options.
“The market becomes saturated and then they tell you that there is no price.
Simply with this heat, the planned harvest is brought forward a week, and suddenly there is a quantity of broccoli that you don't know what to do with," says Francisco Gil, a farmer from Campo de Cartagena and secretary of COAG Murcia, who details how he also Many fruits and vegetables are discarded for mere aesthetic reasons, because they do not meet the visual standards of supermarkets.
“I take this excess production, grind it and use it as organic matter,” he says.
“We shred lettuce, organic matter;
we grind broccoli, organic matter;
watermelon, organic matter... We also bring in the sheep and they eat the melons... It's very hard, but everyone looks for a way, speaking clearly, everyone does what they can."
Although it is very difficult to keep track of all that good agricultural production that is discarded, there is a detailed record throughout the country, month by month, of the withdrawal of agricultural products from the market.
This is the part subsidized by the EU, through the so-called Fruit and Vegetable Producer Organizations (OPFH).
Here there is control because economic compensation is given to farmers, although what is withdrawn cannot exceed 5% of what was marketed in previous campaigns.
According to these reports published by the Spanish Agrarian Guarantee Fund (FEGA), an organization attached to the Ministry of Agriculture, in the last six years an average of more than 70 million kilos of fruits and vegetables have been withdrawn annually in the country.
In this case, the records indicate that 54.6% of the recalled products were donated to soup kitchens or charitable institutions, because as Agriculture explains, when this happens the help paid to farmers is double that when it goes to others. Destinations.
However, this does not mean that it remains a surplus of the system.
Furthermore, 32.7% of the fruits and vegetables ended up as animal food and 12.6% went to the other category (biodegradation, composting, authorized waste management centers...).
Among all this mountain of fruits and vegetables that did not reach the market, the products with the most millions of kilos withdrawn in this way since 2018 have been tomatoes, oranges, persimmons, clementines and watermelons.
Based on these data, the research team at the University of Alicante led by Fernando Maestre, one of the most cited Spanish scientists, has estimated the water associated with all these discarded vegetables, using the water footprint methodology.
According to their calculations, the consumption of irrigation water for fruits and vegetables withdrawn from the market in this way in the last six years reaches an average of 10.7 million cubic meters annually, which is equivalent to 10.7 billion liters or 538 ships. tanker per year like the ones they want to take to Barcelona starting in June if it still doesn't rain.
This is only irrigation, but the water footprint increases to 31 million cubic meters annually if, as is the case with this methodology, the consumption of rain or water contaminated by crops is also included.
"We must keep in mind that this part that is withdrawn from the market is the tip of the iceberg of agricultural waste in the country, but it is very interesting to know these data because they reflect the way in which we produce food, with overproduction of which “He speaks very little,” Maestre highlights.
“With the drought problems we have in so many regions of Spain, the fact that we are throwing away this amount of water is absurd.”
To quantify water waste, researchers have multiplied the kilos of fruit removed by the water footprint of each variety in each territory (which is different depending on the consumption of the plant and how water resources are used in that site).
In this way, they have estimated that the recalled products that have generated the greatest water waste since 2018 are plums, persimmons, oranges, nectarines and clementines.
Likewise, they have also calculated that the greatest irrigation waste for this reason has occurred in the Valencian Community (20.8 million cubic meters), Murcia (17.3 million), Andalusia (11.6 million), Extremadura (8 .5 million) and Catalonia (5.5 million).
They are right in the areas that currently have the most problems with water scarcity, Catalonia, Andalusia and Murcia (although the greatest agricultural production in Catalonia occurs above all in the south, where there are not so many problems with water).
In the case of persimmons, one of the most withdrawn products with the largest water footprint in the last six years, the reason is not market saturation, but rather the aesthetic standards on supermarket shelves.
As Bernardo Ferrer, a farmer from Alzira (Valencia) and second vice president of the Valencian Farmers Association (AVA-Asaja), points out, “the persimmon has a very fragile skin and the market does not admit that it has two or three marks;
"The consumer has been given to understand that the trees produce billiard balls, perfect fruit," says Ferrer, who assures that this causes 25%-35% of the harvest to remain in the plots, which is collected and thrown into the floor.
At least, this farmer assures, about 50,000 tons per year, which is much more than what appears in the statistics of products withdrawn by the OPFH.
Furthermore, this refers only to what is discarded in the field, the sifting then continues in the fruit and vegetable plants, in the processing sector, in the restaurants and in the homes themselves, where it is not unusual for some of the survivors' persimmons to end up in the trash.
In fact, according to Eurostat data, the greatest waste in Europe of food in general (not just fruits and vegetables) occurs at home.
“There are several culprits here and one of them is the consumer, who is indifferent, goes to buy and only sees the price,” emphasizes Francisco Gil from Murcia.
“And, then, the fruit is not perfect, that is a lie.
Since people want perfection, there are companies that only present what is immaculate, at exaggerated prices;
man, no, put the immaculate and the less immaculate, let the consumer decide.
“It can be bought very cheaply, but they have to give us the option.”
These figures of discarded products may sometimes seem small when compared to the gigantic productions of the Spanish countryside.
In 2023, 6,165 tons of watermelons were withdrawn from the market, which represents less than 1% of the total production of this fruit in the country, but this is also equivalent to 308 trailers (the largest trucks, with a capacity of about 20,000 kilos), of which 85% ended up as animal food.
“It is argued that these are collateral damage to produce products that generate a lot of money on a large scale, but I do not understand that, knowing that a lot is going to be thrown away, we do not try to plan better and at the same time ask people not to waste water when brushing.” the teeth,” comments agronomist Jaime Martínez Valderrama, another of the researchers at the University of Alicante who has participated in the calculation of the water footprint.
“What is registered is what is withdrawn from the market to collect the subsidy, but this is the minimum, much more is discarded,” emphasizes the engineer, who assures that there are other agricultural cases in which a lot of water is also being wasted without it appearing. in the statistics of recalled products.
“Thousands of liters of top-quality La Rioja wine are being converted into ethyl alcohol because there is excess production; this is also an absurd waste,” he points out.
Lemons thrown to the ground to be crushed, on a farm in Campo de Cartagena, Murcia.ALFONSO DURAN
Regarding waste in the wine sector, Alejandro García-Gasco, head of the wine section of the Union of Small Farmers and Ranchers (UPA), defends that the drop in consumption is due to a change in habits and assures that the problem is in the reds.
“With temperatures getting higher and higher, what do you want more: a strong, oaky, full-bodied wine, or a fresh white or rosé wine?” says this farmer from Castilla-La Mancha, owner of a family vineyard. .
“France has requested the subsidized uprooting, with public money, of more than 16,000 hectares of vineyards, to uproot red vineyards,” says García-Gasco, who affirms that in Spain the wine regions that are suffering the most from this change in consumption trends They are also the ones that produce the most red wine.
According to the report, in some areas they are not only requesting crisis distillations (subsidies to transform excess wine into alcohol), but also what is called green harvesting or harvesting, aid to destroy the bunches of grapes when they are still immature in the vineyard.
“La Rioja, Navarra, Catalonia and Extremadura are asking for a green harvest for the next sprouting, which means throwing the grapes on the ground,” he emphasizes.
To avoid this waste of resources with a crop that is increasingly irrigated in Spain, the La Mancha winegrower does not defend both the uprooting of vineyards and
a reorientation of crops and improve contractual relations with farmers.
“You cannot plant this joy without knowing where I am going to sell my wine,” García-Gasco insists.
“Imagine that I am watering a variety of grapes that has no market.
Do you see it logical?
Well then, after using a scarce good like water in this way, I go and ask for public money to eliminate that wine.”
Faith of errors
In a previous version, the text said that in Spain a minimum of 50 million tons of persimmons are discarded per year, but the estimated amount is 50 million kilos or 50,000 tons.
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