Spain, watermelon hits record low prices

Despite respecting the regulations established to allow consumers receiving a product in perfect conditions, the quality of watermelons from the Spanish province of Almería is not being economically recompensed at the beginning of the current campaign.
Retail chains are actually negotiating prices to low levels partially due to the lost position of Almería on the European markets, which seem to have found some focal suppliers from the Americas.
The agricultural organizations assure that this year’s watermelon supply is similar to that of last year, therefore what’s happening is not due a problem of failed season planning. No one agrees about the reasons that have caused such bad initial commercial results. Certainly a great deal of pessimism spread through farmers about the final outcomes of the spring campaign, and everyone agrees that the lack of organization of Almería’s producers has caused the province progressively losing the primacy from which it benefited in the past.
A concrete example: Scandinavian companies are currently negotiating prices of watermelons at 0.40 euros per kilo, which corresponds to a compensation for the farmer of 0.20 euros/kilo, while a normal value should be around 1 euro per kilo . This is a clear evidence of the dropping trend that farmers are experiencing at this time of the season.
Andalusia’s interprofessional organization Hortyfruta has promised a meeting soon to analyze the situation. But - Hortyfruta president José Martínez Portero underlines - the quantity of Almería’s watermelons in the European market seems to be “too low to allow an intervention”. Additionally, the difficult identification of a reason for such low prices could be a further obstacle to the crisis’ solution, nor can the product quality be addressed as “Almería watermelon’s quality is undoubted”, Hortyfruta assures