A sad, sad sight

CAMPO DE GIBRALTAR If you live in the area, you've seen something like these. The driest winter in most living memories has dried out practically all the citrus groves in the area, of which San Pablo de Buceite and San Martín del Tesorillo are the most prolific. Many growers had added avocado trees to their crops. To no avail. Some orange trees might survive if they're pruned back properly in the spring, but the avocados are very dead, and have to be replanted with new trees. These take about eight or nine years to produce fruit, once they have reached maturity. Still, there are always the subsidies... San Pablo and Tesorillo are about to be declared 'catastrophic areas'.

Freezing Jimena and Castellar request declaration as 'disaster area'

Frost damage in Tesorillo
(Photo: europasur.es)

JIMENA/CASTELLAR (Agencies) The freezing weather is doing away with this year's crops of oranges and avocados, according to Juan Salido, agricultural union's Campo representative. He added that there had been no temperatures as low as the -5ºC of last Tuesday, since 2205, which means that 80% of the avocado crop is destroyed. Many farmers changed much of their orange groves to avocados, as they are better priced. "But avocados go black very quickly in this kind of weather, and it often means that the damaged trees have to be uprooted and replaced," said Salido. Damage to oranges appear later but his estimate is that about half of this year's crop is already lost. His union is planning to request the area to be declared a 'disaster area' (zona catastrófica), which, he says "Doesn't mean a lot but at least we can get it off our chests. The area most drastically affected is>>>

Countryside offers alternatives to unemployment

(Agencies / photo of cooking at El Anón: EuropaSur) With unemployment reaching unprecedented levels, the countryside around Jimena, and all over the Campo de Gibraltar, offers a way of complimenting benefits and raising some more money: chantarelles, the jewel in the crown of local wild mushrooms, are selling at up to €16 a kilo. However, this year has not been a good one for wild mushrooms, as we reported here, despite recent rains. Heavy storms can 'drown' the incipient musrooms before they mature, to which must be added>

Oranges, oranges everywhere

The Cooperativa del Campo Guadiaro, the orange cooperative based in San Pablo de Buceite, in the municipality of Jimena de la Frontera, has announced that it is marketing its own brands of oranges: Huerta de San Pablo and Vega del Guadiaro. Juan Carlos Casas, president of the cooperative that groups some 250 members, including orange growers as well as cattle breeders, says that most of the oranges go to the juice industry and that they work with big enterprises such as Don Simon and Pascual, while a good part of the production is also exported to Germany, France and the UK. Casas adds that this year's harvest is having a good start.>