THE PLASTIC SEA
In southern Spain, there is the highest concentration of greenhouses in the world — a laboratory of development and innovation visible from space, producing vegetables for all of Europe
Europe’s vegetable garden is in Almería, in southern Spain — and it can even be seen from space. A small white patch along the Andalusian coast that looks like a glacier is in fact the world’s highest concentration of greenhouses. Over thirty thousand hectares of land covered in plastic form a geometric labyrinth five times the size of Manhattan, where 3.5 million tons of vegetables are produced every year — from tomatoes to cucumbers, peppers to zucchinis, eggplants to melons — enough to feed half a billion people and generate more than three billion euros in revenue. “We call it the ‘sea of plastic’; it’s the largest monument on the planet dedicated to food production,” explains agricultural entrepreneur Lola Gómez, “but it’s also a place devoted to innovation and technological development — elements that ensure control and, above all, vegetables twelve months a year.”
The economic miracle began in 1963, when in an arid and sunny peninsula called Campo de Dalías, farmers started protecting their crops from the wind with rudimentary plastic greenhouses. They soon realized that the greenhouses could also diffuse light, retain heat and humidity, and therefore control the microclimate. This — together with drip irrigation, natural pest control, and genetic research — made it possible to increase the number of harvests, even in winter. The sea of plastic thus became a true district of intensive agriculture, where, in addition to the greenhouses, there are nurseries, chemical laboratories, vocational schools, and research centers (such as Tecnova, which studies more efficient plastics and crops adapted to climate change), as well as packaging companies and cooperatives for product distribution. These are exported everywhere, especially to Northern European countries.
The flip side? The workforce consists of 70,000 foreign laborers, mostly Moroccan and sub-Saharan, often underpaid and living in precarious conditions. Can sustainable development truly coexist with human exploitation?
