Last Thursday, the agricultural organization UPA-UCE Extremadura showed its opposition to Conesa's proposal to "reduce the acreage devoted to tomato cultivation campaign," which in its opinion is an "attempt to impose a decline in prices that would entail huge losses for the growers."
According to UPA-UCE, Conesa aims to reduce the acreage by "between 10 and 15 percent" this campaign compared to the previous year; that is, "between 2,400 and 3,600 hectares."
The organization has said that it expects last year's prices to remain stable and amount to between 70 and 75 Euro/tonne, which "was already around 8 Euro per tonne less than in 2015, but "the Conesa group doesn't agree with this approach and is trying to impose an additional reduction of 1 Euro/tonnes on last year's prices.
UPA-UCE wished to clearly voice its "rejection to this unilateral attempt to bring prices down," which has been considered "totally unjustified and abusive," and has asked fruit and vegetable producer organization to "reject this imposition and prevent low prices from leading Extremadura's growers to a disaster."
The General Secretary of UPA-UCE Extremadura, Ignacio Huertas, said at a press conference that "there were already serious problems with profitability with last year's prices, even though the situation was saved in the end for many farms thanks to the weather and the good performance of the late varieties."
Thus, the General Secretary of the agrarian organization stressed that "there are no reasons to justify a decline, as the value of Spanish processed tomato exports grew by 1 percent in the previous season compared to the average of the last three years, reaching 440 million Euro."
Source: Europa Press