Morocco’s Sahara Greenhouse Expansion Threatens Spanish Tomato Industry

According to the strategic plan Generation Green 2020-2030, Morocco will make 5,000 hectares of greenhouses available to farmers in its southern provinces during this decade, reports El Confidencial. These lands will be dedicated exclusively to the cultivation of tomatoes which will be exported to the European market in order to compete with Murcia and Almeria, leaders in tomato production.

Professionals in the sector in Almería, Murcia, Granada and Malaga have constantly denounced the EU-Morocco agreement which facilitates the export of this product to the European market by the kingdom, which seriously threatens, it is said, Spanish production.

The new agricultural plan of Morocco frightens the Spanish agricultural union COAG which fears that the kingdom will become a "megalopolis of the tomato". This plan threatens Spanish tomato producers, warns the union which calls on the European Union to take urgent measures to reduce this threat which risks spreading to other crops.