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Intensive farming in Almería

Greenhouse agriculture in southern Spain

  • 6 min read
  • 4 chapters

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History

The first greenhouse was built in 1963 and the technique was extended by the Campo de Dalías or Poniente Almeriense and later by the Campo de Níjar, in the east. The use of polyethylene as a substitute for glass had already been tested in the Canary Islands and Catalonia. The plastic was spread over wooden posts or metal structures and secured by wire. The transparent plastic intensifies the heat and maintains the humidity. This allows harvests to be harvested one month earlier than in an open field and ahead of other regions, starting harvesting in December and allowing the plant growth of the autumn-winter plantings until March. This allows for doubling, and sometimes tripling, the number of harvests.

Migrant agricultural workers

Beginning in the 2000s in the El Ejido region of Andalusia, African (including large numbers of Moroccan) immigrant greenhouse workers have been documented as being faced with severe social marginalization and racism while simultaneously exposed to extremely difficult working conditions with significant exposure to toxic pesticides. The El Ejido region has been described by environmentalists as a "sea of plastic" due to the expansive swaths of land covered by greenhouses, and has also been labeled "Europe's dirty little secret" due to the documented abuses of workers who help produce large quantities of Europe's food supply.

In these greenhouses, workers are allegedly required to work under "slave-like" conditions in temperatures as high as 50 degrees Celsius with nonexistent ventilation, while being denied basic rest facilities and earning extremely low wages, among other workplace abuses. As of 2015, out of 120,000 immigrant workers employed in the greenhouses, 80,000 are undocumented and not protected by Spanish labour legislation, according to Spitou Mendy of the Spanish Field Workers Syndicate (SOC). Workers have complained of ill health effects as a result of exposure to pesticides without proper protective equipment.

Groundwater pollution and drilling of water wells

Groundwater is being polluted with fertilizers and pesticides. Some 5200 tons of chemical waste is dumped into the area each year.

The local government has also banned drilling new water wells, but this is often ignored and new wells are drilled up to a depth of 2000 meters.

Plastic waste

Some 30 000 tons of plastic waste is created each year, and in places where the soil has become infertile, the greenhouses are abandoned after plastics shredding. The plastic waste from the greenhouses is reported to run off into the Mediterranean Sea.

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