Tomates, pepinos y pimientos (Part 1)

Claire Everett

Last week I was in Spain on a roadtrip inspired by a need to get away from London for a while, catch up with friends, practise my “evening-class-level” Spanish, and enjoy some good food and sunshine. Before I left, I had an idea that my next blog would be about Mediterranean diets and how the warm climate, fresh seafood, grazing-style tapas and perfect conditions for growing fruit and vegetables make it so easy to be healthy. But during part of our journey heading west from Mojacar along the coast, I changed my mind.

I like to think I have a pretty good idea about where the food I eat comes from, the conditions in which it’s produced and how it reaches me. It’s clear when we buy things like tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers in UK supermarkets that, outside the comparatively short UK growing season, much of this produce is imported from Spain. What I’d not realised is the extent to which our need for these salad vegetables impacts upon the Spanish landscape. The first 150km we travelled after we set off from Mojacar was covered, as far as the eye could see, in white plastic “greenhouses” within which salad vegetables grow. “So what?” you might say, “it has to be grown somewhere and somehow, right?”. To a certain extent this is what I said as we drove, telling myself I was simply disappointed that the view wasn’t the scenic coastal drive I’d imagined. But it kept bugging me and when I got back I looked up a report I had seen the header for on the Guardian website a couple of months ago (Lawrence, 2011).

The report describes the modern day slavery occurring in the Spanish hothouses, with farmers using migrant workers to provide cheap labour in order to keep the price we pay for salad vegetables low. The farmers however are caught in a vicious circle where retail buyers dictate their profit margins so they can’t afford to pay workers the minimum wage. Throughout this, the supermarkets’ own profits remain high. If we consider the environmental impact, this kind of intensive farming leads to the spread of pests and disease, to which the response is the use of pesticides thus increasing the cost to the farmer and again lining the pockets of the global companies, this time in the agrochemical sector.

It’s not something that can be easily tackled by the consumer. If a Fairtrade style policy was put into place and the workers paid more, it is unlikely the supermarkets would absorb this cost and it would therefore be passed to us to stretch our already tight budgets. If we stop buying this imported produce we would potentially put the migrants out of work altogether and it’s highly unlikely they could find a means of returning to their families in Africa. And of course many of us enjoy the year-round supply of ‘summer’ vegetables. Even if we don’t eat as many salads in winter, we still expect lettuce in our sandwiches and a salad garnish with our restaurant meal. But what if we didn’t have this option..? (To be continued)