Nora Johnson: Good Times Run Dry on Avocado Plantations

A Spanish Stonehenge has been discovered in Andalucia on farmland near the border with Portugal after the owners presented plans to convert potentially one of the largest megalithic sites in Europe into an avocado plantation.

The site, dating back at least 7,000 years, contains more than 500 standing stones and two stone circles similar to the one on Salisbury Plain. Nonetheless, should Spain allow these avocado plantations given that every kilo of avocado fruit requires 2000+ litres of water?

With avocados viewed as “green gold”, farmers in Andalucia and many other parts of Spain will be sorely tempted to rip out orange trees to plant this “lucrative” fruit. But with water shortages exacerbated by drought, it’s no stretch of the imagination to foresee they’ll soon be fighting, literally, over water supplies.

Orange trees have already been ripped out in Valencia, replaced by pomegranate trees. Now farmers there want avocados, too, but are currently being refused, presumably because of water usage costs.

A final thought: if you look at what’s happening in Australia due to overproduction, prices have crashed. Maybe that’ll happen here, too. And they’ll start putting all those traditional, less-thirsty orange trees back. Result!

Nora Johnson’s critically acclaimed psychological crime thrillers (www.nora-johnson.net) all available online including eBooks (€0.99;£0.99), Apple Books, audiobooks, paperbacks at Amazon etc. Profits to Cudeca cancer charity.

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