Spain: Stable price for Romanesco cauliflower

Although there was speculation last season that cauliflower production could decline sharply in Spain, preliminary official figures show a decline of 12.4%. That is still a lot, but less than the decrease observed in other open field crops, such as broccoli, according to data from the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture. “We have maintained our area of previous years. We focus more on quality than quantity, and generally on smaller markets,” says Miguel Ángel Sánchez Salmerón of Distinet, a company from the Murcia region. "We focus on winter cultivation, because then there is no local product available in the rest of Europe due to the climate," he explains. The decrease in supply after the end of the harvest in the Central European countries translates into attractive prices for Spanish product. In the first week of October, grower prices for cauliflower were even 64% above the five-year average for that week, and for the packaged product 72% above average. An increase of 165% has ...