ASAJA Castile-La Mancha has denounced an unjustified drop in the price of almonds in recent weeks and has urged the Food Information and Control Agency (AICA) to intervene and tackle abusive practices that do so much damage to the whole sector.
The reference prices of almonds of the Comuna variety, set in the markets of Reus and Murcia, are almost 30% lower than a year ago, falling even below that of American almonds, even though the quality of the latter is inferior. This is also taking a toll on the prices of the Lonja de Albacete, which is the only one with a fair representation of the producing sector.
The spokesman for the Nuts Sector of ASAJA Castile-La Mancha, Anselmo MartÃnez, explained that "while the Lonja de Murcia has reduced almond prices by almost two Euro in recent weeks, these have actually barely dropped in the international market, with just a fifty cent reduction for some American varieties whose size, flavour and organoleptic qualities are quite inferior, which makes us suspect of speculative movements in the food chain."
Furthermore, MartÃnez continues, "another circumstance that leads us to believe that producers are being abused is that both what retail traders are paying for the product and the price paid by consumers haven't changed at all since the month of November."
That is why the agrarian organization has called on the AICA to carry out the appropriate investigations and exercise control in the nuts chain until it can be verified that operations in the market are being carried out freely.
Lastly, Asaja Castile-La Mancha regrets the lack of information and the little involvement of the administrations to structure and organise the nut sector and demands more tools for producers to allow them to have enough data and facilitate the marketing of their products.
