Extremadura will devote around 22,000 hectares to tomato cultivation this campaign, some 3,000 less than last year. This reduction is mainly due to the weather conditions recorded last spring.
The president of the Acopaex, Domingo Fernández, said that the campaign will also start late, in the first half of August.
The adverse weather conditions of the second half of spring, mainly the storms of April and May, have entailed the planting of 1,500 hectares less than initially planned for this year, with that acreage having to be reused for other crops.
The acreage, in any case, was already lower than in previous years, so the figure reached in 2018 will be the lowest in the last three years.
However, Fernández said that this reduction is not alarming, because everything will depend now on the campaign's development, and in this sense, the milder summer temperatures should have a positive impact.
"A good campaign could compensate for the reduction in the acreage," said the head of the Agrupación de Cooperativas Agrarias de Extremadura.
Source: EFE