Asaja Córdoba has announced that the picking and mechanized harvest of garlic has started, and within seven or eight days, depending on the weather conditions, the cutting will be carried out by more than 2,000 day laborers.
The national president of the Garlic Sector of Asaja, Miguel del Pino, says that the problems with the hiring of workers due to the state of alarm in the country "are already being solved and there will be crews of more than 100 and 200 people on the plantations for a month or month and a half. Thus, the harvest of the second largest garlic production in Spain "... is now guaranteed to happen with national laborers."
However, he regrets that, due to the economic situation in Spain caused by the COVID-19 crisis, there are many laborers who won't be able to get work, since the supply of labor has been much higher than the demand for workers.
This campaign's production is expected to be good in terms of volume, and it will be a high quality one, because the weather conditions have been ideal. Moreover, there is greater demand, because the main competitor is China, with 83% of the global production, but the consumer is now reluctant to buy Chinese garlic. Besides, there was a global shortage, as ships were unable to leave the Asian continent.
Thus, this year, the sector may be able to recover from difficult past years, says Del Pino, because “there is a great demand for garlic from different international markets, although there is also uncertainty about how the coronavirus pandemic will develop worldwide and how this will affect the markets."
According to data from the Ministry of Agriculture, At the national level, there has been a slight increase in plantings (around 1%) with respect to the previous one, reaching in the whole of the country the 27,730 hectares and a production, predictably, similar to last year. However, the meteorological conditions of the coming months will determine the final quantity and quality.