MADRID (Reuters) – Spanish strawberry growers on Wednesday criticised a German consumer campaign calling for supermarkets to boycott berries grown near Spain’s Donana wetland, which is under threat from climate change and illegal irrigation.
Spanish strawberry growers association Interfresa said the campaign on German online petitions site Campact, which has so far been signed by 150,000 people, was “insidious and damaging to the strawberry and red fruit industry”.
The petition notes the huge volume of Spanish strawberries sold in Germany and calls on Edeka, Lidl and other supermarkets to stop selling imported berries grown near the endangered wildlife sanctuary in southern Spain.
The province of Huelva, where the park is located, produces 98% of Spain’s red fruits and 30% of the EU’s. It is the world’s largest exporter of strawberries.
The regional government is planning to legalise irrigation around Donana even as scientists warn the park is in critical condition with lagoons drying out and biodiversity disappearing amid a prolonged drought.
Reducing the amount of water extracted is one of the main solutions for saving the wetland, according to scientists.
The association denied farmers were using water from illegal sources in the national park, or that huge quantities of water are being pumped, as the petition claims. It added that they use cutting-edge techniques to guarantee an efficient use of water.
It said the closest farms to Donana were 35 km away and the vast majority of companies in the berry sector were 100 km or more from the area, meaning only a small proportion of farms would make use of the irrigation system that will be legalised if the law is approved.
(Reporting by Emma Pinedo; Editing by Charlie Devereux and David Holmes)
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