"France: "Domestic strawberries better quality than Spanish imports"

One can smell the exquisite odour of ripe strawberries outside the 6,000m² greenhouse at Gérard Pobeda's Domaine de La Palunette. With a state-of-the-art set up, the greenhouses are fully automatic, respecting environmental standards, such as ventilation and temperature (thanks to doubled inflatable sidewalls no heating required). Water and fertiliser are recycled as nothing goes back in to the ground- a pipeline system leads them to a storage facility.

The strawberries are produced above ground, in a substrate of coconut fibres. Harvesting is easier, a picker collects about 200kg a day. The strawberries are clean, unsoiled and therefore unaffected by disease. They do not suffer from predators either as they are in covered greenhouses.

The main advantage of this local production is that it supplies local commerce, rather than relying on imports. The fruit is picked when sweet and ripe, and delivered the next day.

Gérard Pobeda specialises in tasty strawberries (Cléry and gariguettes). From March to June he harvests 30-40 tons and employs about 15 people. ''I'm banking on quality by producing fruit with good flavour which we only pick when ripe, unlike Spanish imports. Obviously they're not the same price, but the quality is completely different!''

To spread out his production further than greenhouse and tunnel farming, he has begun field production this year, but will wait and see as ''there are many predators and picking is not as easy''.