I think it’s similar to the inexpensive central and south American watermelon, raspberries blueberries, tomatoes, and of course mangoes, papaya, guava, that the convoys of giant trucks bring to the United States courtesy of NAFTA. We truly can thank Jesus
(heh-soos) for our cheap, tasty produce!
Globalization is not necessarily good for local farmers, but it certainly brings fresh produce cheaply year-round to the US and EU consumers. When I was visiting my native Poland in 2018, I found even herbs and greens from parts of Africa, much less tropical fruit.
Besides importing produce, big Agro businesses lobby governments to import humans . I know that Spain gave worker visas to 40,000 Africans.They work in dire conditions (akin to than the undocumented South Americans in the United States)
The nutritional value of European produce is questionable, because they grow produce under cover of polyethylene greenhouses, (actually designed to lower the amount of sunlight and retain the humidity/conserve water).
These laborers have to toil in extremely humid conditions. Especially for women, the conditions are unacceptable. For example, one of the criteria that’s paying uses in order to give a temporary worker visa the women from morocco, is that they document that they have young children in Africa, as a form of collateral that they will not become refugees, but will return back to the children
The environmental impact of covering seemingly the whole southern Spain in plastic has to be problematic. Below is a picture of what much of Andalusia (southern Spain) looks like.
The summer before Covid I took my 12&9 YO children to re-create a fantastic trip of my privileged youth. In 1995, my parents paid for my sister and my 23-year-old-self to travel from Brussels, through the French Riviera, along the coast of Spain all the way to Malaga in Andalusia. It was an amazing trip, and the countryside in Andalusia was pristine, though so barren that it conjured a lunar landscape in places.
When I returned with my children and drove from Barcelona to Andalusia in 2019, I could not recognize the place: along both sides of the road spanned silver waves on plastic oceans of small greenhouse farms, gaunt faces of overworked workers poking out. There were a couple abandoned farms with shreds of plastic sheeting hanging on rusty skeleton frames - waving in the mistral. image|690x821
