Already that I was not passionate about strawberries, I feel that I will catch pimples. Could someone confirm?
Spanish strawberries / ecological scandal
By mid-June, France will have imported more than 83 from Spain
tons of strawberries. Finally, if we can call these big things "strawberries"
red, still green near the tail because picked before being ripe,
and looking like tomatoes. With more or less the taste of
tomatoes ...
If the only problem with these fruits was their blandness, after
everything, only trapped consumers could complain about having
bought a product that is currently selling for between two and three euros
the kilo on the markets and in supermarkets, after having
traveled 1 km by truck. At an average of ten tonnes per vehicle, they
16 a year make a journey worth its weight in strawberries
CO2 and other exhaust gases. Because almost all of these fruits
grow in the south of Andalusia, on the limits of the national park
of Doñana, near the delta of the Guadalquivir, one of the most fabulous
migratory bird and nesting bird reserves in Europe.
A team of WWFrance investigators had to be interested in
the rising tide of this strawberry out of season so that it is revealed
the ecological aberration of this production that stifles the strawberry
French (part of which, moreover, does not grow in
better ecological conditions). What the envoys discovered
WWF specials, and confirmed by Spanish environmentalists, illustrates
cheap globalization.
This agriculture covers nearly six thousand hectares, of which a good
hundreds already encroach on the park illegally (tolerated)
national. Officially, only 60% of these crops are
authorized; the others are "wild" extensions on which the
regional power turns a blind eye despite protests from
environmentalists.
The strawberries intended for this production, although it is a
perennial plant productive several years, are destroyed each year.
To give strawberries out of season, plants produced in vitro are
placed in the middle of summer in fridges that simulate winter, to move forward
their production. In the fall, the sandy soil is cleaned and
sterilized, and microfauna destroyed with methyl bromide and
chloropicrin. The first is a violent poison prohibited by the
Montreal protocol on gases attacking the ozone layer, signed in
1987 (last deadline in 2005); the second, composed of chlorine and
ammonia, is also a dangerous poison: it blocks the alveoli
lung.
Who cares? Most strawberry growers
Andalusians employ Moroccan labor, seasonal workers or
underpaid undocumented undocumented migrants, who
warm up in the evening by burning the residue from plastic greenhouses
covering strawberry plants in the heart of winter.
... Local environmentalist tells of disease explosion
pulmonary and skin conditions.
Plants grow on black plastic and receive irrigation
which transports fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides. The
crops are supplied with water by boreholes, half of which have been
installed illegally. What turns dry savannah into a
part of this region of Andalusia, causes the exodus of birds
migratory and the disappearance of the last pardel lynx, cubs
carnivores of which there are only thirty left in the region, their
only food, rabbits, being endangered. As the
forest, of which 2 hectares have been razed to make way for
strawberries.
The season ends at the beginning of June. The five thousand
tons of plastic are either blown away or buried
anywhere, be burned on the spot.
... and farm workers are asked to return home or
to go into exile elsewhere in Spain. Note: they have the right to
seek treatment at their expense in case the harmful products they have
breathed ...
The production and export of Spanish strawberries, the essentials
being sold before the end of winter and until April, represents
the least sustainable as agriculture, and upsets what
remains in the public mind as a concept of season. When the region
will be devastated and production too expensive, it will be transferred to
Morocco, where Spanish strawberry manufacturers are starting to
settle. Before coming from China, where are already imported
apples even more processed than French apples ...