A July without a supply of watermelons and melons in supermarkets

“Where before we used to load five trucks of watermelon bound for supermarkets, now we have enough to fill half a truck”. In this very graphic way, Plácido Pérez-Chuecos, a farmer from Lorca (Murcia), a territory where the largest outdoor watermelon plantation in all of Spain is produced, summarizes the historical production deficit that the considered summer star fruit is going through this campaign. The huge drop in supply is causing serious supply problems on the shelves, a problem that consumers have begun to detect and that has even led Mercadona, questioned by users due to the lack of the product in its stores, to justify the reason from its official account on social networks: “Due to the adverse weather suffered in the watermelon and melon-producing areas, we currently do not have to offer the product normally. For this reason, there may be lack of service in some of our stores, we are sorry for the inconvenience”.

A member of the Alimer cooperative -which integrates 200 watermelon producers and which last year planted more than 60 million units-, Plácido recalls how up to four hail storms in a few days, the first on May 13, devastated the crops in Lorca. They took away more than 500,000 kilos of watermelon just two weeks after harvesting, affecting the complete cycle of the plants and also the thermal meshes that cover the farms: “I know that people from outside the fields don't understand it and think that we are crying all day, but the truth is that we have never seen anything like it, it was a disaster, 50 liters fell in 15 minutes and the hail devastated everything,” he laments.. Losses in this area alone amounted to 8 million euros. So the problem is simple: “We don't have watermelons, we haven't been able to produce them and the few we have we have had to go to buy those areas where the storm didn't affect us, even Valencia.. In this way, they went “from not having water due to the drought to having the fields flooded, that has been the reality, although it is difficult to explain it, that people understand it and do not believe that we are crying all day,” he explains.. Along the way, temporary jobs have also been lost in this month of July. Without collection there is no labor.

EXCEPTIONAL CIRCUMSTANCE

The problem of this campaign is unprecedented in the Spanish market and is motivated by various causes. The first is that, beforehand, fewer watermelon and melon crops had been planted due to the drop in irrigation allocations due to the drought and the high production costs that have been dragging on since the previous season.. The official figures of the Ministry of Agriculture advanced in May that 20% less area had been sown.

In total, last year closed for both crops with a plantation of 16,211 hectares (-15.8% compared to 2021) and 16.1% less than the average of the last five years, even reaching double digits in Andalusia, one of the largest producers in the country (especially Almería), with a reduction of 25.1% of hectares.

For the first time in history, Spain was below 600,000 tons of melon planted, a product in clear decline in sales. All this decrease caused the consumer to pay up to 12 euros last summer for a kilo of these fruits, as if it were a luxury product, taking into account that 20% of the total production of watermelons in Spain is dedicated to export. Another worrying fact: the 'Unió Llauradora' association calculates that direct losses for melon and watermelon producers in the Valencian Community will be around 44 million euros this season, with a drop in production of around 52% compared to last year.

The first watermelons of the year – apart from those that arrive from Morocco – are produced in the greenhouses of Almería and then the plantations begin in the Levant and, at the end of July, those of Ciudad Real begin. It is the main producing triangle. Production from Latvia and Macedonia has also arrived in this campaign, explains Plácido: “Our watermelon, due to the climate we have, is very sweet, very good, and although the first of the year to be put on the market are those from Morocco, in the end our product is much better and they buy it from us”, highlights the Murcian farmer, who points out that melons are becoming increasingly less popular “because it is not profitable and people choose to eat more and more watermelon for its flavor”.

As for prices, at this time, and given the scarcity of supply, the products that have them as a treasure, which are very few, are being paid an average of 0.70 euros for each kilo of watermelon, a very high price in any season.. On the shelves they are being sold for almost two euros. “These prices will not last long if we manage to recover production in August,” predicts Plácido in the middle of his plantation, with the only two workers he has been able to hire to extract the few units of watermelon he has saved this July.

CUTTING THE TAJO-SEGURO TRANSFER

As if that were not enough, from Alicante the shortage of watermelons is attributed to the cut in the Tajo-Segura transfer. Specifically, the Asaja organization of this territory criticizes that “producers cannot plant if they are not sure that they will be able to irrigate their crops, nor what will be the quality of the water they will have after the increase in ecological flows without technical justification” and “the continuous decisions of the Ministry for Ecological Transition (Miteco) to send fewer cubic hectometres than the allowed monthly limit, as happened in June.”

In this sense, they warn that “the lack of stable water management by the administrations has led many farmers to abandon the harvest for fear of not having the most necessary resource, water, and the few watermelons that have been planted have been lost due to the alteration of flowering due to the extreme heat in April and the heavy rains in May in the province of Alicante”.