Twelve autonomous regions in Spain remain on alert due to storm Jana. Last Thursday afternoon, the rains were particularly heavy in Murcia, where Spain’s State Meteorological Agency’s forecast was exceeded. Although heavy rains were recorded in various producing areas, Lorca bore the brunt in this region, where more than 100 liters per square meter were collected in 24 hours. There were even some growers trapped in the approximately 800 hectares of flooded vegetable fields, FreshPlaza informs.
The Coordinadora de Organizaciones de Agricultores y Ganaderos (Coag) estimates the damage caused in the agricultural sector by the rains recorded over the last few days in the Region of Murcia at more than 10 million euros.
“It had been raining for several days, and after such heavy rainfall on Thursday, many fields and access roads became waterlogged,” says Sebastián Aguilar, commercial director of Campo de Lorca, a company producing vegetables, mainly broccoli and cauliflower.
Photo: cartagena.es
“In the last few days, we’ve had to slow down the brassica harvest, which is being carried out manually because of how muddy the fields are, as that’s making it impossible to enter with heavy machinery,” says Aguilar. “Consequently, there’s a limited supply of produce and some tension in the retail, as not all the orders can be fulfilled.”
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Leafy vegetables, such as lettuce, spinach, and kale, among others, are bearing the brunt, and major damage to the production is expected due to excess mud.
“Right now it’s impossible to access our kale, cavolo, or celery fields, as they are completely flooded,” says Nacho Doménech, from the producing and marketing company Agromark. “We are harvesting some broccoli and cauliflower manually. It’s still too early to know the extent to which the production will be affected, but, in general, there’s likely to be an impact due to the proliferation of fungus because of the excess humidity once the rainy period has passed.”
“Since harvesting has been put on hold for several days, we’ll be forced to do extra shifts on Sunday, which is quite unusual. In any case, there is still a product shortage and supply will continue to be scarce in the next few days,” says Doménech.
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