It was last year, we believe, that anybody passing the Carchuna beach would have seen hundreds of metres of cucumber mounds, rotting. The reason was that there had been a glut and it was cheaper to dump them rather than sell them at below-production prices.

This  year the sector is beset by the same problem and the local cucumber farmers were talking of dumping the whole crop again. However, the unanimity is missing this year and the decision was dropped when some of the farmers decided they wanted to sell. The rest of the farmers were stupid enough to dump theirs, allowing these dissenters to catch a good price for theirs.

But there appears to be no consent anywhere, with distributors wanting one thing, producers wanting another and the Granada sector wanting something different to their Almeria colleagues, just over the border. But at the end of the day, it is the big distribution chains that rule the day, and they couldn’t give a damn if they are paying the farmers a price which is inferior to how much it cost to grow them – the big chains will always make money, because after squeezing the last euro cent from farmers, they will sell them to supermarkets for much more.

But whose fault is it if production outstrips demand? A farmer will see that his neighbour is making money selling cucumbers and thinks, “Great idea!” and before long you have every square metre of greenhouse land pumping out cucumbers.

Fed up with being portrayed as the villian, the large distribution chains issued a statement, claiming that the farmers should be directing their ire at the fruit wholesalers; i.e., the co-operatives that buy the produce from the farmers and sell it to the distribution chains. They say that they do not set the prices, but the fruit wholesalers do.

Certainly the hondigas (fruit clearing warehouses) do not have a very good reputation amongst fruit farmers because, allegedly, much of the fruit that these warehouses reject as too small etc, mysteriously end up in the supermarkets, instead of being disposed of by the said warehouses. But that’s another story

News: Carchuna, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)