No rain on the plain: Spain's fruit-and-veg industry's climate fight.

Keywords: Environmental Sustainability; Fresh produce; Features EN Environmental Sustainability Fresh produce Features N.PAG N.PAG 1 10/06/23 20231004 NES 231004 A record-breaking drought across the Mediterranean has been adding to Europe's ever-increasing food security woes, as parched Spanish soils inflict knock-on effects across the continent. Earlier this year, COAG, Spain's principal farmers association, warned that recent droughts had already inflicted "irreversible losses" on over 3.5m hectares of rain-fed wheat and barley. Spain's hotter and more arid future Spain's water problem isn't new, nor is it likely to disappear anytime soon: in 2019, the Spanish association La Unión de Uniones de Agricultores y Ganaderos (the Union of Farmers and Ranchers) reported drought-related losses of €1.5bn, while research by TU Graz University of Technology found that the European continent has been suffering froma severe drought since 2018 with chronically low groundwater levels. [Extracted from the article]