Thursday, November 30, 2023, 00:43
Growing the highly prized Vega Baja artichoke seems to be, campaign after campaign, becoming a high-risk investment. The weather is no longer good and, this time, the excess of heat and the absence of rain in this atypical autumn is spoiling the first ‘last’ of the jewel of the Bajo Segura orchard.
This is what Asaja warns and it is corroborated by producers consulted by this newspaper. The plants that were planted in the garden terraces at the end of summer are already suffering from high water stress that, the president of the farmers’ association, José Vicente Andreu, estimates, could result in up to 10% of the harvest being lost. And if weather conditions do not change, up to 30%.
In the last campaign, the start was also equally bad, but it was partly rewarded with the frosts that occurred in winter in Guadalentín, which raised the price of the Vega Baja artichoke. In this sense, there is still a campaign ahead and we will have to see that second ‘last straw’.
However, both in the Lorca area and in Vega Baja, parallel situations are occurring in their fields. Farmers are opting for other vegetables and, among them, the favorite is broccoli. «Every day more is consumed, both fresh and frozen. It withstands poor quality water due to salinity, and is good for tired soils or soils with fungal problems,” describes Andreu.
The president of Asaja Alicante, in this sense, points out that, with this panorama, fewer and fewer small farmers are encouraged to continue with artichokes, while those who remain in their place are mainly large companies. In this regard, it is worth remembering that Orihuela is the largest exporter of this fresh product in all of Spain.
Large companies play with the advantage of having the liquidity to migrate their productions depending on the climate. Companies from Vega Baja have already moved part of their crops to higher places in the provinces of Murcia, Alicante and Albacete. Andreu, for example, detects that, within Alicante, there has been a significant increase in artichoke production in the Muchamiel area. “There are virgin lands, good climate and, above all, more water security,” he says. Not in vain, while the CHS is already announcing water cuts for irrigators, to the north, in the Vinalopó, they continue to be supplied thanks to the transfer of the Júcar.
The latest invention that may allow the artichoke, despite the lack of cold, to continue being the star of the Bajo Segura garden is the so-called hybrid artichoke. A recently created transgenic that, he says, is gaining ground on the traditional white artichoke from Tudela. «It is between 20% and 30% more productive. The problem is that it is usually associated with export. It is hardly sold at auctions.
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