• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Farmers despair as volcano ravages La Palma’s banana crop

September 24, 2021 by David Barret Leave a Comment

September 24, 2021

By Marco Trujillo and Nacho Doce

LOS LLANOS DE ARIDANE, Spain (Reuters) – In more than 50 years growing bananas on the Spanish island of La Palma, Antonio Brito Alvarez has never seen anything like the devastation wrought by the Cumbre Vieja volcano, which has been spewing out molten rock and ash since Sunday.

“All this is burnt, burnt from the heat and the wind … The bananas are totally burnt,” said Alvarez, 65, picking off charred black fruit from a tree in his small plantation in the agricultural heartland of Los Llanos de Aridane.

Fruit that was spared the scorching heat has been spoiled by fine particles of hard volcanic dust, which chip away at the banana’s skin, leaving it unsuitable for sale.

“These can’t be taken to the packer,” he said.

Walls of black lava https://ift.tt/3oj3aSv have been slowly ploughing westward from the eruption site since Sunday, destroying homes, schools, churches and plantations, just down the road from Alvarez’s farm.

Despite his ruined crop, Alvarez, who left school at 13 to work in the fields, considers himself one of the lucky ones – neither his plantation nor his home were swallowed by the lava.

“When it started burning the houses, destroying them … I went off on my own and I began to cry,” he said. “Please, just let it stop.”

With a much smaller tourist sector than nearby Tenerife or Gran Canaria, La Palma, an island of about 80,000 people in the Canaries archipelago, depends on banana cultivation for around half its economic output.

The volcano has put about 15% of the island’s annual production at risk, endangering up to 5,000 jobs, the industry has said.

“Losses are already occurring because the banana is in constant production. It is a plant that requires fairly regular irrigation and almost daily work,” said Sergio Caceres, manager of the Asprocan banana producers’ association.

The island’s steep, rugged terrain is ill-suited to automation, meaning farmers need daily access to care for their crops.

Authorities, who want to keep roads clear for emergency vehicles, have banned local farmers from harvesting until Tuesday.

If the lava keeps flowing towards the sea, it may come into contact with irrigation pipes that feed the entire region, warned Alvarez, adding: “That would be a very serious problem.”

(Reporting by Nacho Doce and Marco Trujillo in La Palma and Emma Pinedo in Madrid; Writing by Nathan Allen; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Source Link Farmers despair as volcano ravages La Palma’s banana crop

David Barret
David Barret

Related posts:

  1. Wall St Week Ahead: Investors grow wary as stocks hit new highs
  2. Golf-Europe take early lead over U.S. at the Solheim Cup
  3. Canada PM Trudeau says main election rival has shown poor leadership on COVID
  4. European stocks rise as travel shares jump on Ryanair forecast

Filed Under: News

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

  • Space Explosions, Dead Sea Scrolls, And Why It’s So Hard To Sex A Dino
  • This Image Of Earth (And Saturn) Will Change You
  • Watch Inquisitive Humpback Whales Blow Bubble Rings At Whale Watchers
  • How Long Did Neanderthals Live For?
  • Want To Use Dragons As Dice? Now You Can, Thanks To Math
  • Why Did Humans Start Using Fire? New Theory Suggests It Wasn’t To Cook Food
  • Controversial “Alien’s Math” Has A New Translator. Can He Reform Its Reputation?
  • How To Watch A Rare Daytime Meteor Shower This Weekend
  • Over 250 Years After Captain Cook Arrived In Australia, Final Resting Place Of HMS Endeavour Confirmed
  • Over 1 Trillion Dollars’ Worth Of Precious Metals Are Hiding In Lunar Craters, Study Suggests
  • What Happened To Marco Siffredi? The First Person To Snowboard Down Mount Everest
  • Why The 28 Biggest Cities In The US Are Sinking Into The Ground
  • 200-Year-Old Condom Made Of Sheep Appendix Contains A *Very* NSFW Drawing
  • How Does A Rattlesnake Make Its Famous Rattle?
  • “We Captured Something No One Had Documented Before”: Wild Worm Towers Seen For The First Time
  • Chimpanzees Catch Yawns From Androids In Breakthrough For Contagious Yawning Research
  • Male Embryos Develop Ovaries In First-Ever Evidence Of Environment Affecting Mammalian Sex Determination
  • A Decapitated Python In Florida Everglades Suggests Bobcats Are Resisting Their Invasion
  • The Black Hole Universe: New Model Suggests The Big Bang Was Not The Beginning Of Everything
  • “World’s Smallest” Nano-Violin Measures Less Than A Hair’s Width – But Could Lead To Big Discoveries
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version