Cucumber crisis!

Well, this is a strange one!  I know that if you grow crops you can easily have a glut but never thought about the weather affecting the crops grown around this region in the invernaderos  - plastic greenhouses - which cover a vast area of Southern Spain.

I have posted links to The Seaside Gazette before,  and read these articles today,  not sure a glut is quite the word for the humungous number of kilos they have!


Great weather for tourists, but just the right conditions to cause havoc to the cucumber crops under plastic.
The atypical weather is causing the cucumber plants to go berserk and flood the sector, causing many producers to sell at below-production prices.
When the season began in September – it finishes in July – prices stood at 60 cents a kilo, which was pretty good and they would have remained that way had the production rhythm not thrown a wobbly causing one crop to overlap the next.
The cold which should have slowed production never came so that in the first three months the market has been swamped and prices have fallen to 25 cents a kilo. Trouble is, it costs 35 cents a kilo to grow them.
November saw a 20% over production with Granada throwing 18-million kilos of cucumbers at the international market a week.
There are two solutions; grin and bear the lapse until the arrival of the cold or start dumping.
Be prepared to share the beach again with mounds of cucumbers!

	Then a couple of days later this news:

The sector is considering dumping one million kilos a day until the price recovers – we’re talking about 40% of the production. And that’s not including Almería’s production; just Granada’s.For this to work, everybody would have to agree and be in on it, but unlike the previous cucumber crisis, when the Carchuna beach at the western end had mountains of cucumbers along it, there is no consensus. Consequently, farmers are afraid to take the first step.
After all, if you dump all your crop then your neighbour sneakily sells his, not only will the erratic dumping not bring the prices up, but you will also end up in prison after murdering your neighbour.
Despite huge and repetitive donations to local food banks and charities in general, it only accounts for an insignificant percentage of the over production – in other words, simply giving it away instead of sending it to the rubbish tip doesn’t work because there is a limit to how many cucumbers that the needy can munch through.
And you can’t give them away further afield because you start incurring in transport costs.
Only one thing can save the sector…. bring on the winter cold!

The strange thing is that we very rarely see these long cucumbers in our local shops,  only the small pepinos - they have thicker slightly prickly skins - we'd rather have the 'glut' version,  usually sold here as Dutch or Holland cucs.  When you can find them that is!