The Canary Islands has lost 2,500 hectares of tomato in the past fifteen years because the agricultural agreement between the EU and Morocco has seriously affected them. There has been a decrease in marketing and the agricultural land devoted to this crop has been used to cultivate vegetables, avocados, papayas, and mangoes.
According to the book, The agriculture in the Canaries in the early twenty-first century", presented yesterday by the Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Water of the Canary Islands, Narvay Quintero, and one of its authors, Gustavo Pestana, of the 4,000 hectares lost in the last 15 years, 2,500 correspond to tomato crops and the remaining to potato crops, which were affected by various pests, as reported in the book.
The Canary Islands, where 18 percent of the land can be cultivated- in contrast to Spain, where this percentage averages 52 per cent- has 42,000 hectares of crops, i.e. 35 percent of the total area that could be cultivated; the remaining 90,000 hectares, 65 percent of the total, are not used to grow crops.
60,000 hectares of that land that is not being cultivated has been abandoned since the sixties and it is very difficult to recover it, while 10,000 would be easily recoverable, stated Gustavo Pestana.
The crisis of the tomato sector, which has lost 2,500 hectares of this crop and is currently only one third of what it used to be, has forced farmers to plant vegetables, avocados, papayas, and mangoes, the specialist added.
He also said that the islands where agriculture had increased the most were in La Palma and El Hierro. Additionally, he said that there had been a spike in avocado crops because its demand had increased since 2008 and plantations had increased significantly in El Hierro. Lanzarote and Fuerteventura had started to grow avocados recently for the first time.
The maps that appear in the book and that detail the crops in the Canaries are available on the web of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Water.
Source: EFE