Spain throws away 400,000 tons of lemons: ‘Production has got out of hand’

According to the latest estimates provided by the Spanish agricultural union COAG, in the 2023-2024 season, around 400,000 tons of lemons cannot be sold and will go to waste — about 27% of the planned production. Losses from this massive waste are estimated at €120 million ($129 million). Spanish farmers have blamed the problem on various factors: lemons entering the European Union from Turkey, Egypt, Argentina, and South Africa; investment funds altering the market; supermarkets that only want aesthetically perfect fruit; the rise in pests; climatic adversities... However, some in the sector openly recognize that the main reason for the disaster is the disproportionate rise in the number of hectares cultivating lemons on Spain’s Mediterranean coast.

One of these critics is the World Citrus Organization (WCO), which cites the excessive rise of lemon crops in Spain as the main cause for the disaster. The WCO does not understand why the entry of foreign lemons is criticized when Spanish lemons are found across Europe. “Spain is the leader in the market, it is the one that controls the situation, it is always easy to blame someone else, but we must accept that we are in markets in which there must be a minimum level of competition,” WCO Secretary General Philippe Binard tells EL PAÍS by phone. “Let’s look at what happened with the tractor demonstrations in Europe, our headquarters are in Brussels, the Belgians complained about the Dutch, the French about the Spanish, the Spanish about the Moroccans....”

The Interprofessional Association of Lemon and Grapefruit (Ailimpo) — which represents the producers, cooperatives, exporters and the processing industry of the lemon sector in Spain — has not only distanced itself from the criticism of foreign lemons, it has also admitted that lemon cultivation needs to be reduced in Spain to rebalance supply and demand. Ailimpo proposes a different path to what was seen in some of the tractor protests: apart from tax reductions, improvements in agricultural insurance and promoting increased consumption, it is also committed to a more environmentally friendly model — it supports regenerative agriculture or the management of lemon farms as forests as a means of generating carbon and biodiversity credits.

For José Antonio García, director of Ailimpo, there is no doubt where the problem lies: “Production has got out of hand,” he says. “The data speak very clearly. The cultivation area has gone from 36,000 hectares eight years ago to nearly 53,000 hectares today.” He explains that lemon farmers decided to plant more trees due to the “very striking returns” on the crop. This move prompted other investors to get involved. “In the end, it is an exercise in simple mathematics. If the market is able to absorb 1.1 million tons of lemons, and the estimated production for this season is 1.5 million, there are 400,000 tons that are going to stay in the fields.”

Pedro Gomáriz, head of citrus at COAG, acknowledges the excess production in the country, but says it is one of many factors. “The exaggerated amount of lemon from third countries that is entering the European Union is one of the big factors, it is unfair competition, because they are also entering with [phytosanitary] products that are not allowed here, and on top of that they are entering with pests that are not hitting us,” says the farmer, whose arguments have so far not been proven. “They are coming from Turkey, South Africa, Egypt, Argentina. They are flooding the European market with lemons that compete with ours, but without having to meet the same standards as us, treated with products that we do not have here, with much cheaper labor and often subsidized by the state,” insists Gomáriz.

While these complaints are common, the data on lemon consumption in the EU analyzed by Ailimpo, between October 2023 and March 2024, shows a quite different situation. In those six months, the total demand for these citrus fruits in the EU (excluding domestic consumption in Italy and Spain) was 403,000 tons, of which 302,000 came from Spanish fields, while the rest — 87,000 tons — came from Turkey. In other words, three out of every four lemons consumed in EU countries in this period were grown in Spain. According to Ailimpo, these figures are also similar to what was recorded in previous years, meaning they are unlikely to have played a significant role in the disaster of the current lemon season, which runs from September to June.

Gomáriz also blames the disaster on supermarkets’ “oligopolistic” practices, decisions by investment groups, and weather events, while downplaying the importance of the spike in lemon cultivation. “The life of a lemon tree is like a Gauss bell. Its harvest increases, at 15 to 20 years it reaches its maximum and from 20 onwards it begins to decrease. So, of course, there is a lot of new lemon destined for the replacement of plantations,” he says.

“This is the elephant in the room that no one wants to see,” says García, who notes that in the last eight years, seven million lemon tree seedlings have been sold in nurseries in the country. “These are really very typical dynamics of the agricultural sector. We have seen it in other products such as the persimmon, we are seeing it with the pistachio, with the almond tree, they are cycles where the farmer sees profitability in the crop and there is an explosion of cultivation.” García acknowledges that other factors are at play, but believes this is the biggest reason for the current disaster. “It is true that there are investment funds involved in the lemon sector, but they have not invested a single euro in new plantations,” he says.

For Ailimpo, what’s most important right now is to address the losses of this disastrous season. But the organization also believes that green measures are key to ensuring long-term economic profitability. “We have closely followed the development of regenerative agriculture in citrus in California, and we believe that the future really lies there,” says García. He explains that his organization is trying to design a system of green practices to improve CO₂ absorption, which will allow the sector to generate carbon credits. “It seems like science fiction, but it is already working in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, where agricultural activity is also generating biodiversity credits. Because when we think about biodiversity, we think about lizards, birds, bees, but we always forget what biodiversity there is in the soil.”

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition