Faced to the drought which intensifies year after year on harvests, farmers are forced to review their plans. As stated in an article by The Guardian spotted by TF1 info, some professionals in the sector, in Spain, have abandoned the cultivation of olives for that of pistachios because of the consequences of global warming.
Much more expensive to sell, this dried fruit is above all less restrictive to cultivate in agricultural land often hit by drought. This is particularly the case in those of the rural region of Castile-La Mancha, one of the poorest in the country. Farmers are increasingly turning to pistachios, whose sale price per kilogram (6 to 8 euros) is much more attractive than that of olives (65 to 85 cents). Or gains that can increase by more than 800%.
“This means that many more farmers can survive,” explains the British daily Gustavo Adolfo Gálvez, a pistachio producer near Toledo, who has seen the region gradually depopulate in recent years. “People from my village moved to town because they couldn’t survive as farmers. But now they see that even with only 10 or 15 hectares, you can earn a decent living,” he adds.
READ ALSO“Farmer, I live below the poverty line”
A culture that takes time… but profitable in the long term
In Spain, the pistachio crop can withstand heat and cold, and thrive in poor soil. “It’s the crop of the future and it needs less water than almonds, for example,” says José Francisco Couceiro López of the regional institute for agricultural research and development. But this also brings its share of difficulties: “The biggest handicap is that farmers who plant pistachios have to wait at least seven years before their first decent harvest”.
READ ALSO“We must prepare for these more frequent and intense heat waves”
Either way, growing pistachios is profitable in the long run. In 2021, Spain harvested 2,800 tons of pistachios from 70,000 hectares, almost all of them in the Castile-La Mancha region, and mostly organic. “Our pistachios are the best on the market,” adds Gustavo Adolfo Gálvez.