Just like in the Netherlands, gardeners in Spain are also short of resources

The personnel shortage in horticulture is not only a bottleneck in the Netherlands. Gregoria Escuin's peach company is located in the northeastern Spanish region of Aragón. There it is a growing problem to find enough people and get the work done.

 

At the end of November, Nieuwe Oogst visited the peach orchard of Gregoria Escuin in Calanda, Spain, located in Teruel, during a press trip for European agricultural journalists. The province covers the sparsely populated south of Aragon.

 

Much of Teruel is mountainous with steep ridges and deep gorges. There are an average of five inhabitants per square kilometer. For comparison: the average population density in the Netherlands is 529 inhabitants per square kilometer.

 

Finding enough staff is therefore the biggest problem at the peach company, which was founded by Escuin in 2016. In the 9.9 hectare orchard, spread over three plots, there is a lot of manual work to be done during the growing season.

 

The grower works with one permanent employee all year round. Two people work on the company for eight to ten months a year and seven additional people are employed between May and October. According to the Spanish perk grower, finding workers is a growing problem. Young people often move to cities or elsewhere in the country. 'So there is not much supply, so they have to come from further and further away. There are also fewer and fewer people who want to do the work.' The staff therefore no longer just comes from the local area. Colombians, Moroccans, Romanians and Poles also work there.

 

Thinning in particular, placing the bags around the fruits and picking them are labor intensive. Fruit thinning is done in May and June. The bags are then placed around the remaining fruits. The peach harvest starts in mid-July.

 

Where you start with putting on the bags, the first round of picking starts. In total, the pickers have to visit all the trees a maximum of five times. The color of the fruits determines whether the peaches are ready for harvest or not.

 

Packing the fruits with the translucent and breathable paper bags has an important function. “Firstly, it should better protect the fruit against insects,” says Escuin. 'The aim is that we have to spray less chemicals. The bags create a microclimate. This promotes sugar formation and gives the fruit a firmer flesh.'

 

During picking, workers remove the organically digestible paper bags and leave them in the orchard. The bags are shredded when all pruned branches are on the ground.

 

The peach company is located in the Bajo Aragón sub-region, almost at the transition from a Mediterranean climate to a maritime climate. The average precipitation is low and evenly distributed throughout the year. Summers are quite warm with temperatures around 30 degrees and winters are relatively mild.

 

Not only the heat and drought, but also the Mediterranean sea fly plagued the Spanish peach harvest last year. In 2023, the country experienced the warmest and driest April since 1961. During the press trip, it was still bone dry in the Aragón region, roughly between Zaragoza and Barcelona.

 

The heat especially hit Escuin's company in the 2023 growing season. The total peach yield was below par at 310 tons. 'We have also lost kilos due to insect infestation. On the other hand, we are pleased with the quality," says the entrepreneur.

 

It is the second consecutive extremely dry year in the southern European country. Last year, Escuin removed a total of only 140 tons of peaches from the trees. In addition to the drought, this was also due to night frost during flowering and several summer storms.

 

The Spanish peach grower is trying to control the drought by using fertigation hoses, but in an extreme season this is not enough. The fact that the sandy soil contains little organic matter and therefore has a moderate water storage capacity does not help either.

 

Escuin tries to increase the organic matter content in the soil every year by shredding the branches after pruning and leaving them in place. The mulch layer also protects the soil from drying out.

 

Escuin brings the entire peach harvest to San Miguel. This marketing cooperative has one hundred members. Nearly 80 percent are peach growers. The remainder mainly concerns olive farmers.

 

Due to the drought, there will be fewer peaches on the market in 2023, meaning that entrepreneurs will receive a good price for their product. The better the quality, the better the peaches are paid for.

 

Escuin still enjoys her work, but will reach retirement age in a few years. Two sons regularly help out on the farm. She hopes that one of them will eventually want to continue the company.