The Association of Producers and Exporters of Fruit and Vegetables in Andalusia and Extremadura (Asociafruit), which brings together 80 percent of the companies producing and marketing potatoes in Andalusia, has denounced that retailers continue to offer potatoes from storage, whose "quality is worse after months in refrigeration chambers," when the new potato campaign in Spain has already kicked off.
Thus, it has explained in a note that there is enough volume to supply the whole market, but "Spanish consumers are eating French potatoes that have been stored for months, of lower quality and with fewer culinary benefits, and which nobody else in Europe wants, while our newly harvested production is exported to all European countries, so that their consumers have a fresh, new and high quality product."
He has warned of the "absurdity" of the situation, "with the same trucks that have shipped the freshly harvested potatoes for distribution across Europe sometimes being the ones bringing those old potatoes kept in chambers to be consumed by Spaniards."
Asociafruit has criticised that France has specialised in covering the demand of the Spanish market in the winter months at low prices, thereby "displacing" the early Spanish production, which "cannot compete in terms of prices."
Thus, Spain has been seeing a collapse of the acreage devoted to the cultivation of potatoes, while the volume of imported French potatoes grows every year. In 1992, there were 257,000 hectares of potatoes cultivated in Spain; at present, this figure doesn't reach 75,000 hectares. This has a direct impact on employment, since it has entailed the loss of more than 35,000 direct jobs.
Source: Europa Press
