Flan de la casa con natas en texturas - Foods From Spain

any other Autonomous Community,
since it has very little of the wideranging
pastures, forests and
extensive olive plantations that make
up the majority of organicallymanaged
land in Andalusia, Castile-
La Mancha and Extremadura.
Organic plantations represent as
much as a tenth of the region’s
available agricultural land. The
region has experienced a boom of its
own in recent years: the number of
organic growers in Murcia increased
from 1,683 to 2,193 in 2008.
Anyone who thought organic
agriculture was all about head-inthe-clouds
idealism, small scale and
idyllic surroundings—hippies going
back to the land—would be amazed
by the organic scene in Murcia.
Organic fruit and veg is big business
here: a full 90% of local production
is exported, overwhelmingly to
Germany, bringing in 55 million
euros annually to the local economy.
On a sunny spring morning I visited
Hortamira, one of 174 producers
on the books at the CEAM.
A co-operative in the coastal flatlands
outside Cartagena, Hortamira has
320 producing members and around
a fifth of its production is organic,
though much of the rest is produced
under the Integrated Production
System, using a minimum of
chemical pesticides and herbicides.
The co-op’s organic Pinver brand
accounts for an annual turnover of
30 million euros.
The warm, dry climate of
southeastern Spain makes the region
of Murcia ideal for winter cultivation
of broccoli, celery, cabbage,
cucumber, lettuce, peas, and citrus
fruits like lemon and orange. At the
time of my visit, however, the co-op
was busy dealing with a massive
crop of peppers. Over the course of
the annual pepper “campaign”, so
my white-coated guide informed me,
up to 3,000 tons (6,000,000 lb) of
peppers can pass through
Hortamira’s factory in San Javier.
Today the packing plant was
working at top speed; the air in the
factory was full of the sweet/sour
smell of peppers. Color-coded lines
(green for organic, red for
conventional) were calibrating the
items for size and weight, packing
them in threes in a transparent flowpack.
Where were they headed? For
Germany, Switzerland, Denmark,
and the UK. (The red/yellow/red
combination, imitating the Spanish
flag, is particularly popular abroad.)
Outside in the fields, dirt tracks
wound between sprawling
greenhouses of which this pepper
plantation was just one of many.
Nothing about this structure and its
contents would say “organic” to the
casual observer—until he or she
looked a little more closely at the
weeds around the edge of the plastic
sheetings (no herbicide allowed) and
Websites
·www.agroecologia.net
Spanish Society of Organic
Agriculture (SEAE). (Spanish)
·www.vidasana.org
Vida Sana Association. (Spanish)
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