The Councillor of Agriculture, Narvay Quintero, together with the region's banana producers, is seeking alternatives to the "pica" or throwing away of excess production, because although it is legal, it is not "socially understandable" in 2015 to waste 11 million kilos of fruit.
Quintero said so on parliamentary committee to Francisco Déniz, MP of the party Podemos, who quantified the number of bananas thrown away in recent years at 42 million kilos; which is not just "serious," but an "indecency," since the fruit is subsidised.
The Councillor noted that discarding fruit when there is oversupply is regulated by an EU rule of 2007, which justifies this action in case of exceptional market conditions and establishes the volume to be withdrawn at a maximum of 5 percent of the total production, although the Canary Islands have never reached this percentage.
All European agricultural sectors have resorted to this possibility and the Canary government, according to its Councillor of Agriculture, cannot do much about it, because it is regulated by the EU, and if producers brought us to court over this, they would win."
He noted that, even though this measure is legal, it is not normal for the volume of discarded bananas to exceed 11 million kilos, as has happened this year, compared to 700,000 tonnes in 2014.
Quintero has consequently met with Asprocan and other producer organizations in order to "seek an alternative to the pica," such as allocating two million kilos of bananas to food banks.
The problem is that the Canaries are not able to absorb the entire surplus and transport costs to the mainland should be covered by the producers, added the director.
