Spain: Farmers despair as La Palma volcano damages banana crop

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After weeks of volcanic activity and eruptions, the Cumbre Vieja volcano has severely damaged banana crops on La Palma island, as seen in Los Llanos de Aridane on Tuesday.

Farmers fear their banana production will be wiped away this year, as the fruit, damaged by ash, burned by the heat and the wind, will be unfit for sale.

“The sand, the ashes, the basalt from the volcano, which is inside the ‘pineapple’ of bananas, might get glued, making it impossible to be cleaned off,” said Juan Carlos Rodriguez, owner of a banana field on the island.

The situation will affect a significant part of the population, as banana cultivation accounts for nearly half of La Palma’s economic output.

“We’ll have to face, very sadly, that the production of ‘pineapple’ of bananas from Canarias this year is going to be totally lost. We don’t know if we will be able to save the banana fields for next year,” added Rodriguez.

The eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano began on 19 September and led to the evacuation of more than 6,000 people and the destruction of more than 800 buildings.

SOUNDBITES:

SOT, Juan Carlos Rodriguez, Owner of banana field in La Palma (Spanish): “La Palma has 4,200 growers of the 7,500 registered. Here, there are 12,000 families, between 12,000 and 15,000 families who live directly or indirectly from the bananas and there is a lot of people that have to start their lives again. Thinking now about it, or trying to say what is going to happen with their lives, is very complex. Their lives are totally broken.”

SOT, Juan Carlos Rodriguez, Owner of banana field in La Palma (Spanish): “In the exclusion area, there are about 7,000 square metres affected by this drought, which they’re trying to stop with two desalination ships that should pump 12,000 cubic metres of water everyday plus another tank ship that, somehow, it’s going to support the other two ships. With this, we should cover, maybe, less than half of the water that the banana fields needed before. This situation will cause us to lose all our production.”

SOT, Juan Carlos Rodriguez, Owner of banana field in La Palma (Spanish): “The sand, the ashes, the basalt from the volcano, which is inside the ‘pineapple’ of bananas might get glued, making it impossible to be cleaned off, so this is another loss that we have to face. So we’ll have to face, very sadly, that the production of ‘pineapple’ of bananas from Canarias this year is going to be totally lost, and we don’t know if we will be able to save the banana fields for next year.”

SOT, Juan Carlos Rodriguez, Owner of banana field in La Palma (Spanish): “If the prediction is true, and a new volcano arises in the Fuencaliente-Mazo area, it is going to be like the destruction we’re facing in this area. It won’t just destroy another area, their homes, their memories, the place where they played when they were kids, where they took their first steps, but it’s going to totally block the area we mentioned before, the exclusion area, because it’ll block the two entrances, and that would be the total destruction of our production, the banana fields, tourism and the people who live there, who’ll have to think about moving to another area of the island, or somewhere where they can begin their lives again, because that is what they will have to do.”

#CumbreVieja #LaPalma #Spain

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