Global demand for avocados continues to grow at a rate of two hundred million kilos per year and there is currently insufficient production in the world to meet these increases, which is why Spanish marketers demand being able to increase the area under cultivation.
Enrique Colilles, manager of Trops, the main Spanish trader of subtropical products that brings together the production of 2,300 farmers from the Axarquia region and the Tropical Coast of Granada, told Efe that demand in Europe went from 400 million kilos in 2015 to 480 million kilos last year.
Demand is increasing by around 20 percent which guarantees high and stable prices, which we have seen this last season, he said.
Colilles, who participated in the fourteenth edition of the Technical Conference organized by Trops for its partners in Velez-Malaga, where the company has its headquarters, said the Spanish avocado was preferred over other destinations and that their harvest was directly placed.
He warned that the avocado sector would be unable to absorb the increase in global demand in the coming years, considering that it already supposes the total amount that the main exporter, Mexico, places in the market.
Therefore, faced with a demand that cannot be satisfied, he has insisted that the sector's challenge was to increase the area of cultivation, for which, in the case of Axarquia, it was necessary to increase water resources, something farmers have been demanding for years.
This week, the Andalusian Councilor for Environment and Spatial Planning, Jose Fiscal, met with the irrigation communities of the AxarquÃa to address the drought situation in the region and has pledged that they will adopt measures in a new meeting next week to guarantee irrigation to the subtropics.
Colilles said that producers had been demanding these emergency works for years and that they hoped they would be done now because they need them.
Regarding the success of avocado in the world markets, the manager of Trops has attributed it to the advances in the investigation of their healthy properties in recent years.
"People always presumed that avocado is good for the heart, but now there is scientific evidence proving it," said Colilles, who added that it was also good for weight loss diets.
"It is a super-food that is associated with a healthy life and, from that point of view, it promotes itself on its own," he added.
Source: EFE