The strawberry and water war in Doñana has brutally exposed the seams of an economic activity based on the exploitation of an increasingly scarce natural resource in Spain. The initiative of the Andalusian PP to regularize illegal irrigation areas around the park and the request for a boycott of its strawberries instigated by a German organization have placed the agriculture of Huelva in the eye of the hurricane. But there are other hot spots in Spanish territory surrounded by great controversy. The pressure they receive grows as the drought worsens and it becomes more evident that, with the current level of consumption and infrastructure, there is not water for everyone, be it agriculture, tourism, industry or personal leisure.
Doñana is the most delicate and paradigmatic case because it is an environmental icon throughout Europe, but the tendency to demand a more sustainable agriculture, with a legal and rational use of water, “is getting bigger and bigger and will more”, considers Juan Carlos del Olmo, secretary general of WWF/Adena, the entity that denounced the illegal extraction of water in the vicinity of the wetland, which gave rise to a sentence two years ago condemnation of the Court of Justice of the EU against Spain for the overexploitation of the aquifer.
For some time now, the ecological organization has been working with supermarkets in Switzerland, the United Kingdom or Germany, among other countries, to demand sustainability and legality certifications from suppliers – the two most common are those called Spring and legal use of CAAE water – . Just two weeks ago they held an online seminar with around thirty European distribution chains to explain the situation in Doñana and strawberry cultivation. “We are against boycotts because they pay just for sinners, we want supermarkets to continue working with legal producers, and to do so with purchase protocols on the origin of water”, points out Felipe Fuentelsaz, WWF’s agriculture coordinator and specialist in the strawberry sector in the Andalusian region.
From the employers’ union of the sector, Interfresa, they assure that 90% of the producers in the area who export to Germany have these certifications because the supermarkets in that country demand it. Counting the total number of producers, both those who sell abroad and those who do not, the percentage is low, add sources in the sector. The controversy centers on unregulated crops, between 1,500 and 2,000 hectares – there are no exact figures and they vary according to the sources -, mostly devoted to red fruits. That is to say, around 15% of the production surface – in the Doñana area there are 13,000 more legal hectares -. However, it’s not all black and white here. Part of the farmers combine crops on legal and illegal land and there are also entrepreneurs who, despite concentrating their production in regularized areas, may have obtained water from prohibited wells, living with those who produce all their fruit in full compliance with the regulations of the letter, both in reference to land and water resources.
Environmental organizations focus the pressure on European distribution because between 80% and 90% of all Huelva’s red fruit production – some 270,000 tons – is exported. As for the agricultural associations, they all defend the need to supply the sector with enough water and thus maintain the level of activity. They adduce the economic impact it has on a province with an unemployment rate of 18.07%, according to the latest EPA, almost five points above the national average (13.26%).
Huelva’s red fruits contribute more than 500 million euros in production value and account for 11.3% of the province’s GDP, highlights Andres Góngora, head of fruit and vegetables at the COAG. From a subsistence agriculture based on cereals and olive trees, Huelva switched to strawberry production in the 1980s, a crop that arrived from California. The climatic conditions and the availability of water boosted the production of a very profitable fruit. It was called red gold. But the rapid increase in crops, together with the climate crisis, has put the activity against the ropes. The electoral struggle of 23-J has done the rest.
Among the arguments in favor of maintaining the production rate in Huelva, Interfresa emphasizes the jobs it generates. This campaign has led to 100,000 temporary contracts. Of these, around 52,000 are local workers and the rest, up to 85% of the total, come from EU countries, mainly from Eastern Europe, according to agricultural unions. The offers through the public employment service are never covered 100% and every year companies have to resort to recruiting from non-EU countries, basically women from Morocco – see graph -. More than 14,000 temporary workers from the African country have arrived this season, and there are also shortages here. As with the use of water, the strawberry labor market is riddled with controversies despite the advances. Àngels Escrivà , sociologist from the University of Huelva and activist of the organization Mujeres Huelva 24 horas, which works in network with the association Mujeres Jornaleras en Lucha, uncovers a series of “non-compliance” with temporary workers. For years they have been monitoring working conditions on the ground and have detected that some of them “do not receive the salary stipulated in the collective agreement”, of 55.19 euros gross for a six-hour day. “In many cases the employer reduces them between two and five euros a day to pay for the costs of supplies – water, electricity, gas – for the accommodation, when the law says that they have to pay for it”. “The application of the law dictates – he adds – more controls are needed and conditions must be improved beyond the salary”. The farmers reject these accusations.
Labor issues, however, have been put on the back burner given the unprecedented battle for water. Góngora, from the COAG, defends that the resource can be guaranteed and Doñana protected at the same time if alternative sources to the aquifer are sought, among which the transfer of the Guadiana promised in 2018 stands out, as well as the increase in regenerated and sourced water of desalination plants This is the same formula proposed by the Platform in defense of County Irrigation, favorable to the initiative of the Andalusian Council. “We demand the recognition of some 800 hectares of historical cultivation that were left out of the previous irrigation plan” and are now considered irregular, says Julio DÃaz, spokesperson for the entity. From the Associación de Agricultores Puerta de Doñana, in Almonte, which brings together the legal irrigators, they insist that even then there would not be enough water for everyone. “The transfer must be fulfilled but it is not infinite; there would be about 13 cubic hectometres left to distribute and this does not cover the entire surface that is already regularized, no matter how much everyone applies techniques that reduce water consumption to the maximum”, warns Manuel Delgado, representative of the organization. The confrontation between both sides of farmers is increasing, has reached high risk levels, and has inflicted a deep social wound on the community, they admit. They are the other derivatives of the strawberry and water war.
Both agree that the reputational damage arising from the controversy is enormous and its consequences have yet to be seen. Different agricultural organizations consulted also fear that public scrutiny will reach another type of crops that have grown exponentially in recent years, such as avocados or mangoes from AxarquÃa (Málaga), where the Civil Guard is investigating a thirty farmers for allegedly stealing water to irrigate these subtropical fruits. Also about corn or alfalfa from Lleida, which scientists and agronomists have been drawing attention to for a long time because of their high demand for water and because they are imported crops. Economic activity will have to adapt – they influence – to the new climate reality.
