The harvest of numerous fruit varieties will be much lower in Aragon this year. The production will be 60 to 70% lower than in a normal year because of the frost in early April. That means producers won't harvest some 400 million kilos of fruit.
This reduction will affect the entire chain, from production to marketing, having a significant impact on the labor that will be needed for the collection and handling of the fruit in the warehouses. In fact, according to Vicente Lopez Gil, a fruit grower responsible for Fruit at the Union of Farmers and Livestock of Aragon (UAGA), "nearly 10,000 people out of a total of 15,000 won't find employment in fruit growing this campaign."
At the moment, the collection campaign won't start until mid-May, which means there's been a delay of about 10 to 15 days.
However, seasonal workers have already begun to arrive in the fruit villages in search of placement in the agricultural tasks and in the warehouses of the cooperatives. This year their main problem won't be how to protect themselves from the coronavirus, as in the previous two seasons, but to find work. The prospects aren't very bright. The apricot harvest has been lost in its entirety and 90% of the almond harvest has also been lost, stated Lopez Gil.
Source: elperiodicodearagon.com