Spain: Onion farmers fear severe slashing of prices
Luis Fernando Rubio, chairman of the Onion Producers Association of Castilla La Mancha (PROCECAM), claims harvest output will be 15 to 17% lower than earlier seasons. Rubio brings to mind last year’s European surplus, which was at a record high, as well as the high output of countries like Poland and Germany, resulting in a stagnating market. “To Dutch farmers, it has become cheaper to give the onions away, than it is to destroy them,” Rubio warns. He also notes that there is uncertainty in how onion consumption will develop, although expectations are the lion’s share of the onions will see export in the coming season.
Jorge Navarro, Secretary-General of Albacete ASAJA (the Union of young farmers in Albacete), fears prices will not go up, in spite of a 20% decrease in cultivation. He stresses further that due to this year’s drought, costs have risen exponentially; to maintain cultivation, farmers have had to increase irrigation.
“Last year, a single onion would go for 3 to 5 cents apiece,” Navarro says, “but then farmers were pressed to hold until a better price could be fetched. Eventually farmers were forced to dump products for very low prices.”
Javier Moya, Secretary-General of UPA (the Union for small farmers in Cuenca), agrees the present campaign got off to a bad start, namely on the same price level as last season’s close, when many farmers chose to use the crop to feed their cattle, rather than sell it for 1 cent per kilo.
“The sheep now have eaten the best of our onions,” says Moya, “either that, or they have simply been thrown away. This is destroying the position of our farmers.”
“To add insult to injury,” Moya says, “farmers now have to compete with countries from outside the EU; places like Egypt where big multinationals cut costs by exploiting the workers.”