El Ejido

El Ejido is a Spanish city in the autonomous community of Andalusia in southern Spain. It belongs to the province of Almería and is characterized by growing vegetables in greenhouses. The city is one of the richest in Spain. Social tensions exist between the indigenous Andalusians and Moroccan guest workers.

Geography

The surrounding El ejidos in southern Spain is like a barren and rocky desert, but under the earth is a system of underground rivers with thousands of years old groundwater. In addition there are important factors such as soil moisture, micro thermals and Versalzungsresistenz.

Agribusiness

The geological circumstances were the trigger a year-long extension of vegetable gardening.

El Ejido is Europe's largest agro- industrially used " winter garden ". In El Ejido range of vegetables are grown, and much of the population is of vegetable farming -dependent, which led to a degree of prosperity. The data used for the cultivation greenhouses cover a large area of land; are a total of approximately 36,000 hectares covered with plastic, which the region has led to the nickname "mar del plástico ". It is the world's largest acreage under foil. About 3 million tonnes of greenhouse vegetables are produced per year.

Due to the very large areas and water consumption and the pesticides used on a large scale, the ecological situation is very bad. Groundwater is partially dirty.

History

With the construction of the first greenhouse in the 1960s began with the systematic use of the level as well as the planting of various vegetables. The state encouraged this development. In recent decades, the city has grown haphazardly because of that. The greenhouses were built mostly by hand because there was no money.

In the 1980s, a portion of vegetables cultivation of large foreign speculators was administered, but these companies were able to post any big gains and eventually went bankrupt. Also, large estates could not enforce in El Ejido. Later, the agricultural company saw exposed due to the European market over-saturation increased competition from Morocco. Their prosperity is threatened by an even cheaper competitor: Vegetables from Morocco - whether that is effective depends on the EC import regulations. Since about 2005 there was the first land sales.

Economy

The upkeep of the fields and the irrigation system requires constant care, which is time-consuming and costly.

The harvest is bought mostly by food retail chains to low purchase prices. More than half of the harvest goes by truck for export to Germany and other Western European countries. The small town of El Ejido 2004 had a very large stand at the Fruit Logistica trade fair in Berlin.

In the greenhouses of the region around El Ejido about 90,000 workers will be needed. In the meantime, these are for the most part seasonal workers from Morocco, Romania, Bulgaria, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, but also from Poland and Ukraine, the specific regions are allocated. About half of them have no residence permit. They typically work without an employment with hourly pay. The working and living conditions are extremely harsh.

Riots

In February 2000, there were violent riots by locals against Moroccan guest workers after two Moroccans had killed three residents of El Ejido in no time. The mob of El Ejido burned down shops and huts of the Moroccans. Smashed was also the office of the women's organization Mujeres Progresistas that cares about the illegal workers. These women from El Ejido - then counted the organization 600 members - attracted the strongest aggression at: through them the popular resentment was refuted, women should not venture into the neighborhood of Moroccans. The authorities intervened only after two days. After this incident, a law was passed which made ​​the construction of additional greenhouses authorization. Since then, numerous new greenhouses were built without a permit.

- The information from the quotations should be incorporated into the text.

" On 5 February 2001 made ​​two major Spanish newspapers El País and El Mundo, the anniversary of El Ejido on the main topic. El País created a list of the points of the agreement from the previous year in which the representation of the Government (" fulfilled commitments " ) were compared with the criticism from NGOs, trade unions and migrant associations. "

" Nearly four years after the racist riots against migrant workers in February 2000 adopted the European Civic Forum (EBF ) and the Confédération Paysanne (French farmers union ), in December 2003, again a delegation to El Ejido to send in Spain to the development site to investigate. " "