#almeria

Illegal strawberry farms threaten future of Spanish wetlands

Opponents say proposed amnesty for illegal water tapping in #Doñana_national_park threatens disaster for one of Europe’s green lungs

Juan Romero shakes his head as looks out across the lake at the wading spoonbills, the pipe-cleaner silhouettes of the flamingos and the glossy ibis that flash against the Andalucían sky.

“This is an illusion,” says the ecologist, a retired teacher. The birds are real enough, of course, and so too are the tufty-eared Iberian lynxes that will be sniffing out a breakfast of rabbit in the quieter, wilder reaches of the huge Doñana national park in southern Spain.

The illusion is what the water level in the lake before him says about the health of the reserve. Although there is far less water in the Charco de la Boca than there should be at this time of year, it is faring better than many parts of the sprawling wetlands known as one of Europe’s green lungs.

Water supplies to Doñana, whose marshes, forests and dunes extend across almost 130,000 hectares in the provinces of Huelva, Seville and Cádiz, have declined drastically over the past 30 years because of climate change, farming, mining pollution and marsh drainage. A fresh crisis now looms as regional authorities consider granting an amnesty to the farmers illegally tapping its aquifer to feed the booming strawberry sector.

▻https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e1d3392257dbfaebf6febc01b6bd7c371f8ae533/0_42_3150_1890/master/3150.jpg?width=620&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=82f62b69b71d930a

Nine years after Unesco warned that the area’s world heritage status was being jeopardised by such illegal tapping, the regional branch of the conservative People’s party (PP), which has governed Andalucía for the past three years, has announced a proposal to regularise the illicit farms and wells that stretch across 1,460 hectares near the protected natural space. On Wednesday, the Andalucían parliament will vote on whether to begin the legislative process.
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The PP, whose bid is backed by both the far-right Vox party and the centre-right Citizens party, claims the move would help “safeguard historic rights and a traditional activity [practised] since time immemorial”.

Opponents fear it will spell further disaster for the local environment, and point out that the area’s love affair with strawberries, known locally as “red gold”, began in the 1980s. Between January and June last year, Huelva’s exports of soft fruit – almost 20% of which are to the UK – were worth €801.3m (£678m).

The campaign group Ecologists in Action describes Doñana as “a hostage to agriculture” and says the aquifer is already being stressed by irrigation demands. SEO BirdLife, the Spanish Ornithological Society, sees the plan as “a new assault on the Doñana natural space that favours a proliferation of irrigation and runs contrary to regional, national, European and international legislation”.

Unesco, which declared the Doñana national park a world heritage site in 1994, has asked the Spanish government for an urgent report on the issue “before any decisions are taken that might be difficult to reverse”.

The mooted law comes eight months after the European court of justice ruled that Spain had not fulfilled its obligations on preventing illegal water extraction around Doñana and had failed to take the measures needed to stop “significant alterations” to its protected habitats. The European Commission says it is “deeply worried” at the possible impacts of the proposed changes and has not ruled out taking Spain to the court of justice once again.

For Felipe Fuentelsaz of WWF Spain, the environmental importance of the region cannot be overstated. “Doñana is a unique place that sits between the south of Europe and north Africa and it’s the main migration route for all the birds in Europe,” he says. “More than 6 million birds – and 200 or 300 different species – come through it each year. It’s mainly a wetland, but it also has a very important coastal dune zone and lots of surrounding forest. So it’s three ecosystems in just one place and it’s the lung of Europe.”

▻https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/cf0c8472c14493753c6cb2897839351d6b6a6997/0_212_3872_2323/master/3872.jpg?width=620&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=480b8046f3a176ea

Romero, a spokesperson for Ecologists in Action who has lived in the area all his life, dismisses the PP’s plan as a naked attempt to win the votes of legal and illegal farmers before a possible early regional election. “If people haven’t been obeying the law, then the People’s party can’t come along and tell them – for electoral gain – that they’re going to [get their] land legalised,” he says. “It’s a trick and a ruse.”

The plain truth, he adds, is that Doñana simply cannot cope with the water demands of any more fruit farms.

Drive around the area, where huge white polytunnels break in plastic waves across a landscape of pine and prickly pear, and the feelings of many local farmers are plain to see.

Not far from some of the many decommissioned illegal wells – 420 have been shut down in recent years but others soon spring up elsewhere – are signs graffitied with a slogan that demands “no more harassment” from the Guadalquivir Hydrographic Confederation, an agency of Spain’s ecological transition ministry.

While the local small farmers’ union, UPA Huelva, supports the PP-led proposal, arguing it will help those who missed out on their “historical rights” under a 2014 moratorium that banned any new cultivation or well-sinking, it says it will not “defend those who have invaded forest areas to turn them into agricultural lands without the correct authorisation”.

Not all the local farmers approve of the plan. At the end of January, 300 farmers from nearby Almonte walked away from a regional group that backs the amnesty, complaining that the move would “only serve the interests of a minority of irrigation users”.

One local fruit farmer, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, says the new plan is neither fair nor sensible.

“I think it’s just madness,” he says. “Doñana is something we all love and respect. But there’s a political party that are proposing something – supported by two other parties – that I simply can’t understand.”

The farmer says the planned amnesty is fundamentally flawed and dangerously short-sighted.

“You have to start with the water and not the land,” he says. “If you hand out the land, then everyone’s competing with each other, the aquifer’s suffering and awful things happen. We can’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. But that’s what they’re trying to do and it’s bad for everyone – bad for the park and for the farmers.”

▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/08/bitter-fruit-strawberry-boom-water-plan-raises-fears-for-spanish-wetlan

#Spain #strawbarry_farms #llegal_water_tapping

@cdb_77

Almeria : la face cachée du potager de l’Europe | Noémie Lehouelleur
▻https://www.wedemain.fr/ralentir/almeria-la-face-cachee-du-potager-de-leurope

Avec ses étendues de serres visibles de l’espace, la région d’Almeria, en Espagne, nous fournit en fruits et légumes. Un modèle ultra-productif, au détriment de l’environnement et de milliers de travailleurs exploités. Source : We Demain

’We pick your food’ : migrant workers speak out from Spain’s ’Plastic Sea’

https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/1307636895623655427/Ughozgoe?format=jpg&name=small#.jpg

In #Almería’s vast farms, migrants pick food destined for UK supermarkets. But these ‘essential workers’ live in shantytowns and lack PPE as Covid cases soar.

It is the end of another day for Hassan, a migrant worker from Morocco who has spent the past 12 hours under a sweltering late summer sun harvesting vegetables in one of the vast greenhouses of Almería, southern Spain.

The vegetables he has dug from the red dirt are destined for dinner plates all over Europe. UK supermarkets including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Lidl and Aldi all source fruit and vegetables from Almería. The tens of thousands of migrant workers working in the province are vital to the Spanish economy and pan-European food supply chains. Throughout the pandemic, they have held essential worker status, labouring in the fields while millions across the world sheltered inside.

Yet tonight, Hassan will return to the squalor and rubbish piles of El Barranquete, one of the poorest of 92 informal worker slums that have sprung up around the vast farms of Almería and which are now home to an estimated 7,000-10,000 people.

Here, in the middle of Spain’s Mar del Plastico (Plastic Sea), the 31,000 hectares (76,600 acres) of farms and greenhouses in the region of Andalucía known as “Europe’s garden”, many of El Barranquete’s inhabitants don’t have electricity, running water or sanitation.

Hassan’s house, like all the others in El Barranquete, is constructed from whatever he could find on rubbish dumps or the side of the road; pieces of plastic foraged from the greenhouses, flaps of cardboard and old hosing tied around lumps of wood. Under Spain’s blazing sun, the temperature can reach 50C – at night the plastic sheeting releases toxic carcinogenic fumes while he sleeps.

When he first arrived in Spain, Hassan was stunned by how the workers were treated on the farms. Like other workers in El Barranquete, Hassan says he earns only about €5 (£4.50) an hour, well under the legal minimum wage. “The working conditions are terrible,” he says. “Sometimes we work from sunup to sundown in extreme heat, with only a 30-minute break in the whole day.”

Now, as Almería faces a wave of Covid-19 infections, workers say they have been left completely unprotected. “We pick your food,” says Hassan. “But our health doesn’t matter to anyone.”

In August, the Observer interviewed more than 45 migrants employed as farm workers in Almería. A joint supply chain investigation by Ethical Consumer magazine has linked many of these workers to the supply chains of UK supermarkets including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Lidl and Aldi.

All claimed to be facing systemic labour exploitation before and throughout the pandemic such as non-payment of wages and being kept on illegal temporary contracts. Many described being forced to work in a culture of fear and intimidation. Some of those who complained about conditions said they had been sacked or blacklisted.

Workers employed by Spanish food companies linked to UK supermarkets also claimed that throughout the pandemic they have been denied access to adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) that under Spanish law they are entitled to as essential workers. Many said they were not given enough face masks, gloves or hand sanitiser and have been unable to socially distance at work.

One man employed at a big food company supplying the UK says that he has only been given two face masks in six months.

In response to the investigation, the British Retail Consortium – members of which include Sainsbury’s, Asda, Lidl and Aldi – released a statement calling on the Spanish government to launch an inquiry.

Commenting on the Observer’s findings, Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty, says the situation facing migrant workers in southern Spain is a human tragedy.

“The pandemic has exacerbated the unacceptable conditions facing migrant workers and the Spanish government must urgently act. But two-thirds of all fruit and vegetables consumed across Europe and the UK come from these greenhouses and all the companies and retailers up these supply chains have a responsibility to these workers as well,” he says.

Spain is experiencing the highest numbers of new Covid-19 infections in Europe, with the province of Almería recording more than 100 new cases a day.

Despite the local government in Almería claiming that the virus has not reached the plastic settlements, there have been multiple outbreaks on farms across the province and in the cortijos, the dilapidated housing blocks near the farms in which workers live.

As Covid-19 infections rise, medical charities such as as Médicos del Mundo are supplying masks, gloves and temperature checks in the settlements in scenes more reminiscent of a disaster zone than one of the richest countries in the world.

“People want to protect themselves, but they cannot”, says Almudena Puertas from the NGO Cáritas. “They are here because there is work and we need them.”

In the past month, the local government in Andalucía has allocated €1.1m to create better health and safety conditions, but critics say they have yet to see any significant improvements.

“I do not understand why these people are not being rehoused in better accommodation. Do we have to wait for them to get Covid instead of looking for a much more dignified place, with adequate hygienic conditions?” says, Diego Crespo, a Forward Andalucía party MP.

Hassan knows that his work and living conditions make him vulnerable to becoming infected with Covid-19. When asked whether he is supplied with PPE at work, Hassan laughs. “Gloves and face masks in the greenhouse? Temperature checks?” he says. “They don’t give you anything.”

Like many of the people living in the settlements, he say he is more scared of not being able to work than they of becoming ill. If he can’t send money home, his children don’t eat.

One groups of workers say that they lost their jobs after testing positive for Covid-19 and quarantining at home. Muhammad, a farm worker from Morocco, said that when he and others had recovered and returned to work, some of them were told there was no work for them.

“When I contracted Covid-19, I’d already spent two years working for this company without papers and two years on a temporary contract, but when I came back they said there is nothing for me here,” he says. He says he and the other workers who did not get their jobs back also did not receive the sick pay they were entitled to as essential workers.

The Soc-Sat union, which represents agricultural workers across Almería, says the failure to provide farm workers with basic PPE speaks to the culture of impunity that surrounds the mistreatment of Spain’s migrant workforce.

“Around 80% of fruit companies in Almería are breaking the law,” says José García Cuevas, a Soc-Sat union leader. The union says that across the region, widespread fraud is being perpetrated on the farm workers. “People will work 25 days but their employers will only count 10,” he says. “Or when you look at the payslips, it says €58 a day, which is minimum wage but that’s not what the worker is receiving.” He says that according to figures from the General Union of Workers, workers lose out on up to €50m of wages every year.

For decades, the exploitation and abuse of migrant workers in Spain has been widely condemned by UN officials and human rights campaigners, but to little effect.

Soc-Sat says that in 2019 it dealt with more than 1,000 complaints from migrant workers about exploitation and working conditions. This year it also says it has helped workers file legal complaints against food companies in Almería for breaching labour laws and not providing adequate PPE.

“If, under normal conditions, health and safety regulations are not followed, you can imagine what’s happening in the current situation with a pandemic,” says García Cuevas.

In its statement, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) says its members have zero tolerance for labour exploitation: “Many grocery members have funded and supported the Spain Ethical Trade Supplier Forums ... We call on the Spanish government to launch an investigation into labour conditions in the Almería region to help our members stamp out any exploitative practices.”

In a separate statement, Tesco says it was aware of the issues surrounding migrant workers in Southern Spain and that the company worked closely with growers, suppliers and Spanish ethical trade forums to ensure good standards.

The Andalucían Ministry for Labour, Training and Self-Employment in Andalucía said that it had delivered training for businesses on how to protect workers against Covid-19. In a statement it says, “You cannot criminalise an entire sector that is subject to all kinds of controls by the labour, health and other authorities and that must also abide by strict regulations regarding the protection of workers’ rights and prevention and occupational health.”

In two weeks, the greenhouses of Almería will be at their busiest as the high season for tomatoes, peppers and salad begins. Ali, a farm worker who has been in Spain for more than 15 years, doesn’t expect his situation to improve.

“If you complain, they will say: ‘If you don’t want to work here then go home,’” he says. “Every worker here has a family, a wife and children, but the only thing that matters is that we work to get the vegetables to Germany or the UK. It’s like they have forgotten we are also human beings.”

▻https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/sep/20/we-pick-your-food-migrant-workers-speak-out-from-spains-plastic-sea
#Espagne #agriculture #exploitation #asile #migrations #travail #alimentation #plastique #supermarchés #grande_distribution #migrants_marocains #serres #légumes #Tesco #Sainsbury’s #Asda #Lidl #Aldi #El_Barranquete #Mar_del_Plastico #Andalucía #Andalucia #travail #conditions_de_travail #esclavage_moderne #covid-19 #coronavirus #logement #hébergement #Soc-Sat #British_Retail_Consortium (#BRC) #Spain_Ethical_Trade_Supplier_Forums

ping @isskein @karine4 @thomas_lacroix

BALLAST | Andalousie : la mer de plastique et le fantôme de Juan Goytisolo
▻https://www.revue-ballast.fr/almeria

https://www.revue-ballast.fr/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/fbmar.jpg

Les #migrants sont d’abord venus du #Maroc et d’#Algérie. À par­tir de la fin des années 1990, ils ont été rejoints par des per­sonnes venues d’#Afrique sub-saha­rienne, de l’#Équateur et d’#Europe de l’Est. L’économie de la région bat­tait son plein : les fils des #Alpujarras, le flanc méri­dio­nal de la #Sierra_Nevada, des­cen­daient de la mon­tagne pour ache­ter un lopin, rare­ment plus de deux ou trois hec­tares, y ins­tal­laient une #serre, ache­taient des semences de #tomate ou de salade au dis­tri­bu­teur local, puis employaient, léga­le­ment ou non, des #tra­vailleurs_immi­grés pour de courtes durées (payés par­fois à l’heure ou à la jour­née) afin de faire le tra­vail qu’ils ne vou­laient plus faire. Les marges à la revente, variables entre les dif­fé­rents pro­duits selon les cours, étaient bonnes, en rai­son du faible coût de main d’œuvre — au maxi­mum 5 000 pese­tas (190 francs, soit envi­ron 29 euros) par jour à la fin des années 1990. Mais l’intérêt éco­no­mique était ailleurs : le cli­mat, les serres et la tech­nique du #sablage 4 per­met­taient de pro­duire toute l’année, et donc d’approvisionner les super­mar­chés euro­péens pen­dant l’hiver. Alors, très vite, les villes ont gros­si à la péri­phé­rie d’#Almería. El Ejido, qui n’était qu’un petit bourg agri­cole en 1950, est deve­nue une ville de plus de 50 000 âmes. Les fer­mettes (#cor­ti­jos) tenaient encore debout, quoique déla­brées et par­fois sans eau ni élec­tri­ci­té ; elles ser­vaient au loge­ment des migrants #sans-papiers, quand ceux-ci n’habitaient pas un abri de for­tune, fabri­qué avec des chutes de plas­tique.

#exploitation #esclavage #racisme #violence #agriculture

#Espagne : les naufragés de la mer de plastique - ARTE Reportage
▻http://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/074078-000-A/espagne-les-naufrages-de-la-mer-de-plastique

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Dans la région d’#Almeria, dans le sud de l’Espagne, 80.000 #immigrés travaillent dans la plus grande concentration de serres d’Europe. 35.000 hectares de structures plastifiées où on cultive toute l’année les fruits et légumes qui finissent dans les #supermarchés de France, de Grande Bretagne ou d’Allemagne.

#illégaux (les patrons véreux) #agro-industrie

1. #Andalousie : les fruits de la colère (Rediffusion)

Ils sont plus de 100 000 venus de toute l’Afrique à vivre dans des conditions misérables autour des serres productives de fruits et de légumes à #Almeria en #Espagne. Mal payés, maltraités au nom de la rentabilité économique d’un modèle agricole européen qui s’essouffle. Reportage à Almeria d’Alice Milot.

▻http://www.rfi.fr/emission/20160820-1-andalousie-fruits-legumes-rentabilite-economique-conditions-miserable
#agriculture #exploitation #travail

#Greenhouses in #Almeria, #Spain

https://i.imgur.com/TvKZrQY.jpg

Une mer de #plastique en #Espagne
▻http://www.laboiteverte.fr/une-mer-de-plastique-en-espagne

La comarque de Poniente almeriense, dans la province d’#Almería, en Espagne est surnommée « La mer de plastique ».
Ce nom vient du fait que la région vit essentiellement de l’agriculturre intensive et qu’elle est presque complètement recouverte de serres en bâches plastiques.

Le photographe aérien allemand Bernhard Lang a survolé et photographié la région pour dévoiler avec ces images l’étendue des serres.
Vous pouvez voir le reste des photos sur son site ou ici.

Et donc ici
▻https://www.behance.net/gallery/22272681/AERIAL-VIEWS-MAR-DEL-PLASTICO

https://m1.behance.net/rendition/modules/148680223/disp/1d11b9049835b3ee0cf45b216167973c.jpg https://m1.behance.net/rendition/modules/148680193/disp/ae3b8fca248085741f49b5b15dafedeb.jpg https://m1.behance.net/rendition/modules/148680195/disp/c349fcf02edf03eb0aa9e4a13cb5bd29.jpg