AdrianTO

Is it easier to live organic in Spain than the UK or N America?

Is the food more natural in Spain? Fruits and vegetables grown without chemicals and fertilizers and meat without hormones and antibiotics? I get the sense that it is. Not that Spanish farmers don't produce chemical laden foods. But, is it easier to have an organic lifestyle in Spain?

fionamw

Remembering, of course, that definitions of organic can vary.......I get the sense that it absolutely is not........ yes you can buy organic produce in big supermarket chains; yes you can source organic produce for yourself within towns & villages or whatever. Not sure where to find meat without hormones/antibiotics apart from befriending neighbours & holding out your hand at matanza time!. I've found significantly less evidence of the organic movement in garden centres/nurseries for composts, etc., and the total abandon with which (what around here seems like) the majority of landowners spray weedkiller is appalling to behold.

twistedmelon

A definite NO it isn't.

Hillybilly

Agree with the above 2 comments.
I have never seen an organic section or anything marked as organic in any supermarket around where I live. Markets and greengrocers don't label their produce in any way. The countryside is full of discarded fertilizer etc sacks and containers and the olive trees are presently being sprayed with complete abandon round here, even adjacent to watercourses.
I don't eat meat but I have seen the indoor, intensive forms of livestock rearing all around Andalucia (usually big, long sheds on the edges of towns) - no way can livestock be reared in that way without chemical help.
So unless you grow/rear your own, no, it's not easier, it's harder.

fionamw

Weird timing; I was on the point of posting a thread about permaculture because during a discussion about alternative forms of energy in our (free, Ayuntamiento) Spanish class I had done a text about permaculture & the teacher didn't appear to understand the concept even slightly......and she's really quite a liberated, free-thinking person.

rugbymatt

I own 17 bullocks that live in a barn and are probably going to stay there until they die and not a chemical will go near them unless there are any injuries etc.... Shed/barn does not mean bad... Organic does not necessarily mean good.

AdrianTO

According to this Spain has the most organic farmland in Europe.

http://en.greenplanet.net/food/organ...-farming-.html

And, if you want to start a farm in Spain.

http://en.greenplanet.net/food/organ...c-farming.html

Hillybilly

That's interesting...where does all the organic produce go?! Maybe they export it because it ain't in the supermarkets!

rugbymatt

If people need their eyes opening to how much money Spanish farmers get, maybe this will open them....

http://farmsubsidy.org/ES


... and I quote....
Algodonera De Palma Sa..........€31,682,500


In cotton production!!!!

steviedeluxe

I believe it - the British farmers rake it in too. I once worked as a temp in a Defra office, and it was staggering to see the money paid out to farmers for x, y, and z. They were even paid then to grow nothing - I believe it was called "set-aside".

steviedeluxe

On the other side of the coin farmers are treated really badly by the big buyers like Tesco. It's no wonder they often need these subsidies.

bil

Really? I rented a room off a friend who happens to be a farmer. He grows wheat for thatching, and some beans and stuff.

Were it not for the fact that his thatching straw fetches a premium payment, and the wheat itself is a by product, he would have given it up as a bad business years ago. He's a small farmer and the profit margins on wheat etc for a farmer like him are miniscule. To get the grants requires a lot of paperwork and dealing with some right numpties at times.

There may be some farmers making a fortune, but it ain't the little guys.

One of my customers reared pigs, and he reckoned that the supermarket got far more money out of his pigs than he ever did.

Dick Dasterdly

Hope you don't mean die of old age,.. as against killed in their prime to eat.

Madridboy

What the likes of Tesco has done is terrible IMO but people choose to go there and still complain that they're taking over all the smaller shops / markets.
I can't say I've seen much in the way of organic food in Spain but I'd imagine this is because I never look for it.

bil

Well, that's quite true. Trouble is, Tesco has a pretty good range, food, clothing and household, and they are cheap.

As for organic, well, I have never quite understood the desperate urge to pay twice the cost for a pretty similar product. Being organic does nothing for the actual food content, and I don't exactly see the food in say Tesco's as being contaminated with pesticides to the kind of level that will have a real effect.