The farmers from Huelva, who have grown strawberries for decades because the region's climatic conditions are perfect for this culture, have seen the need to diversify their crops. To diversify their crops, producers started to cultivate other berries, such as raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries, which in recent years grew dramatically and doubled their production area.
Luis Cabezas, a producer from the Frescoral family business, started to seek different crops that would differentiate his business from its competitors and decided to introduce fruits that would have high yields in this area south of the country.
Cabezas, who is interested in growing tropical fruits, already has 15,000 square meters planted with guava, mango, kiwiberry, avocado, and seedless grapes. In the near future, he expects to start growing papaya, figs, and yellow kiwi, among other fruits.
Luis Cabezas works with his father (the promoter of the company) and his two brothers. He said one of the difficulties they had to overcome had been convincing his father to venture into these crops, which had never been cultivated in Huelva. After doing that, he expects they will achieve results in the medium term so they can start looking for the maximum yield per hectare.
Frescoral has been experimenting with different varieties of tropical fruits for a year, and they have already made some initial selections. As a result, the advanced tests should be decisive and the company should start diversifying its crops with a first selection of varieties soon after. "We are still conducting tests, although we have already selected some crops, such as a seedless grape variety or an avocado, from which we already have our first fruits," Cabezas said.
Luis Cabezas knows that this winter's mild temperatures have been quite atypical, which has allowed their tropical crops to produce. Their bet is to work this crops in intensive farming with zero waste treatments, which has been instrumental in designing the plantation's pattern layout.
Focused on research
Frescoral is one of the companies that has opted for experimentation in Huelva's berry sector. They have been collaborating with the Institute of Agricultural Research and Training and Fisheries (IFAPA) for years by providing them with an area where they grow new varieties of strawberry and raspberry. Luis Cabezas saw the opportunity to test tropical crops after acquiring some farms that were not adequate for growing strawberry or raspberry in the municipality of Palos de Frontera. He said the soils were not very clayey and had too much limestone, which made it impossible to grow berries there. Since his intention to diversify, he performed some studies to see what other crops he could grow in these lands.
Thus, he began selecting the first fruits and varieties. Achieving this will take time, as most trees have to grow three years before their production is mature enough.
"Personally, I have high hopes for the kiwiberry crop as I believe it will be the blueberry of the coming years," he said. It is a fruit with the same characteristics as a kiwi, its sweet and its skin is similar to that of the blueberry.
Luis Cabezas is aware that temperature control will be key to the success of his project, but he knows that his experience growing strawberries under plastic will help him bring this project to a good port. Changing plastic to protect the crops against low temperatures and using meshes to avoid high temperatures should be sufficient to maintain the production of the chosen varieties, this will have to be performed throughout all the year.
Frescoral is part of the Santa Maria de La Rabida de Palos cooperative (Freson de Palos). It has 30 hectares of strawberries, 37 hectares of blueberries -25 of which were recently planted-, 4 hectares of raspberry, and 3.5 of pomegranate, which will yield its first production this year.
Strawberry prices
Strawberry price have been one of the main factors why Frescoral has opted for researching new varieties. According to Luis Cabeza, producers are desperate because they don't know what to do to be paid appropriately in the markets. The industry and the marketers decrease prices and producers have been unable to change the situation, he said. In the final stretch of this campaign, he said, the final consumers are paying almost two and a half euro for a kilo of strawberries while farmers are only paid 0.65 € / kilo. Meanwhile, the average cost for harvesting this fruit is around 0.42 € / kilo. As a results, it's quite normal that many producers uproot their plants, which could continue producing for another month. According to Cabezas, cranberry and raspberry have achieved better results so far, "but they are headed down the same path as the strawberry and I think they will experience similar circumstances in a few years."
Source: agrodiariohuelva.es