The Ministry of Agriculture recently shared the first analysis of the 2022/23 campaign of Spanish greenhouse vegetables, which shows an advance in production and interesting results.
According to the report, the country has a total of 36,204 hectares of greenhouse vegetables for the 2022/23 campaign, i.e., 0.7% less than in the 2021/22 campaign, which means it remained practically stable when compared to the average.
The report also highlights the recovery of tomatoes, which recovers part of the land lost to the detriment of other crops. This means that, even without data, we can expect a rise in the hectares dedicated to pepper.
However, despite the fact that the area remains stable, there are different evolutions between the Spanish cultivation regions; in fact, there are decreases in most of the autonomous communities with the exception of Andalusia (the leading region in greenhouse production by area), which would achieve a new advance compared to the previous campaign. The most notorious falls are observed in the Canary Islands, Murcia, and the Valencian Community.
The area devoted to growing tomatoes increased by 4.42% and amounted to 14,160 hectares. The report highlights the intense recovery of the crop in Andalusia compared to the rest of producing areas, such as the Canary Islands, which experienced a recovery in hectares after several campaigns of decreases. According to forecasts, the rest of the territories, mainly Murcia and Valencia, will experience declines.
The planted area has increased for the second consecutive season, but Spanish tomato exports (until February 23) have continued to decline in volume. Between September 2022 and February 2023, Spain exported 341,498 tons of tomatoes, i.e., 12.6% less than in the 2021/22 campaign and 23.42% less than the average of the last 5 years.
By country, at the EU level, the declines in Germany - the main market for Spanish tomatoes with ¼ of total volume -, the Netherlands, and France stand out. In the case of exports to non-EU countries, the negative performance of the United Kingdom should be highlighted, as in the past seven campaigns, the volume exported by these dates has practically decreased by more than half (going from 75,453 tons to 35,606 tons) in favor of other competitors.
In parallel, the unit value of exports set a record €179.6/100 kg, which allowed the accumulated export value to stand at 613.5 million euros, only 2.42% less than last season and 5.54% above the average value of the 5 previous campaigns.
The increases registered, segmented by tomato variety and by position, can be consulted in the following table:
You can read the full report at the following link.