In Germany, the strawberry season begins and Spanish fruits hit the headlines. An online campaign calls on German supermarkets to stop selling Spanish strawberries. What’s behind it?
Spanish strawberries are delicious. At least if you buy them in Spain. In Madrid they only have 500 kilometers under their belt, to Frankfurt am Main they sail almost 2500 kilometers on the motorway – you have to taste it. The carbon footprint will of course be a few numbers larger by then.
But in Germany, the red berries – botanically they are actually so-called aggregate nuts – are only now ripening. If you want to snack on strawberries earlier, you can get them from the world’s largest exporter: Spain. Every year 85,000 tons of Spanish strawberries make the long journey. Soon not if an online campaign is successful.
Large parts of the Doñana wetland are threatened by drying out. Only ditches and a few of the previously numerous lagoons still carry some water.
WWF: 2000 hectares of plantations without a permit
In Spain, the Doñana World Heritage Site is drying up, according to the campaign. “But the strawberry industry taps off even more water – from illegal sources in the centuries-old national park,” it says.
However, there are no strawberry fields in the Coto Doñana National Park itself, nor are there any illegal wells. However, around the Parque Nacional there is a landscape protection area, the Parque Natural. There are also strawberry fields there, whose water requirements are a problem for the wetlands of the Coto Doñana. According to the WWF, around 2,000 hectares are “wild” plantations without permission, which would be a quarter of the area under cultivation. It is estimated that there are up to 1,000 illegal wells that are draining groundwater reserves.
“We have to stop the criminals,” says Felipe Fuentelsaz from the WWF, “because the farmers who comply with the regulations also suffer from those who tap water illegally.”
Andalusia wants to approve wells retrospectively
But the regional government of Andalusia even wants to expand cultivation areas and subsequently approve a whole series of illegal wells. The central government has no means of preventing this. There is even a judgment by the European Court of Justice that requires Spain to do more to protect the national park and the water supply.
When German MPs from the Environment Committee wanted to find out more about illegal wells as part of an information exchange, there was a wave in the Spanish media. Online petition and trip by MPs – it’s about a campaign against the Spanish strawberry because German fruit is three times as expensive, according to business journalist Fatima Iglesias on public television. And parts of the Spanish government wanted to exploit the allegations against Andalusia because of the illegal wells for the election campaign, according to the journalist.
strawberry producer: “Irrigation absolutely environmentally friendly”
In the end, the German MPs canceled the trip to Coto Doñana at short notice because of the campaign problems before the new elections. Why? asks José Luis García-Palacios from the Association of Strawberry Producers, they would have liked to show them everything. “We handle every drop of water more efficiently than any other strawberry producer in the world. Our drip irrigation is absolutely environmentally friendly.”
The initiators of the Internet boycott call do not believe that. Andalusia should no longer supply Europe with cheap berries without considering the environment. They want a ban on sales. That doesn’t leave the Spanish strawberry official cold at first. In Spain, production runs from late December to mid-June – so the season is actually over.