When Blossom Falls: Mallorca's almonds

February. In parts of Mallorca there is a familiar and pretty sight. Almond trees in blossom. The tourism they attract may not rival, say, the tulip fields of the Netherlands, but it does attract some. But for how much longer?

In the past five years, the amount of land devoted to almond cultivation has shrunk dramatically. A loss of 33,000 hectares has left the island with less than half the area for almond-growing that it had in 2005; 25,000 hectares remain.

The decline can be attributed not to crisis but to a change in productive agricultural land use. Where once were almond trees are now olive groves. The decline can be attributed also to factors of competition, consumption, markets and to the Common Agricultural Policy.

Almonds are only one example of a shift in agricultural production. One of the more dramatic has been the move to rice and away from potatoes. Less prone to the capriciousness of nature, rice has altered the pattern of agriculture in the traditional potato-growing area in and around Sa Pobla. Yet, the rice is primarily for domestic consumption, whereas the potatoes of Sa Pobla have long had a significant export market.

Export, however, has been highly influential in driving greater olive production. Indeed, most of Mallorca's olive oil goes overseas. Prized for its quality, it has found new and large markets; China, for instance. Almonds, though also highly valued by these new markets, don't represent the same opportunity, and this is in no small part due to the competition and the market dominance that comes from California.

In the late 1970s, the US overtook Spain as the leading producer of almonds, or rather California did. Some 80% of the world's supply of almonds now comes from California. In a manner similar to that of the Californian wine region of the Napa Valley and its inroads into French supremacy in the global wine market, so agricultural technology, way in advance of Spanish methods, secured a position of dominance for the Californian almond from which Spain and Mallorca have never really recovered.

International competition is not confined to American almonds. Imports of other types of nut have altered Mallorcan and Spanish consumption, eroding the demand for the mainstays of Mallorcan nut production, hazelnuts as well as almonds.

Though Spanish production of almonds in 2011/2012 is due to rise by around 11% on a five-year average, this increase is largely down to natural factors; the harvest will have benefited from generally benign conditions. But the vagaries of nature have, as with the potato, occasionally taken their toll. In 2009, Mallorca's almond production was poor by comparison with other parts of Spain, the result of too much rain and wind inhibiting pollination during the flowering season. And the almond faces another natural threat, in Mallorca and elsewhere: that of worries about the honeybee.

But over and above these different factors, successive reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) have probably been most influential.

CAP regulations have been both positive and negative. They brought about a general improvement in the quality of olive oil, but they also, thanks to subsidies and guaranteed minimum prices above world-market prices, brought about a boom in olive-tree plantation. Though the subsidy has changed since the 1980s, the growing of olives has continued to increase, and this despite the adoption of more environmentally sensitive policies in a 2005 reform.

The effects of this reform haven't necessarily been that environmentally sensitive, notwithstanding CAP criteria that are meant to place environmental issues to the fore. Intensive olive plantations have taken over from what were more traditional crops and, in the process, have reduced biodiversity, and not just in Mallorca.

Allied to this has been a calculation in subsidy known as the coupled payment suppression and its impact on nuts. The outcome of this has been a 13% reduction on margins for Spanish nut farmers and pretty much Spanish nut farmers alone.

Agriculture is only a tiny part of Mallorca's economy, just a bit over 1% of GDP, but it is being looked at anew for its potential growth. The appointment as environment and agriculture minister in the regional government of Gabriel Company, an independent from agriculture, highlights this renewed attention being given to agriculture. But which priorities are grabbing his attention?

While olive-oil production has clear economic advantages, the minister, in his combined role, will know that almonds, a faltering element in the agricultural mix, contribute also to the natural environment and landscape of Mallorca. And at the current rate of loss, by 2017 there will be no almond growing and no almond blossom.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.