Almeria’s Green Pest Management Revolution: An Opportunity That Arose from a Food Safety Alert

Abstract

Almería, a province of Spain, is the leader in horticultural production on a Spanish and European scale. The specific conditions of greenhouse cultivation favor plant development, but also the proliferation of pests. This high incidence of pests was controlled in the past mainly by means of chemical phytosanitary treatments. The aim of the present work has been to analyze the tools facilitated by the Andalusian Government (Junta de Andalucía) to replace the usual pest management process, taking advantage of the context of the food safety alert arising from the detection of isophenphos-methyl in peppers from the province of Almeria in December 2007. The results illustrate that, unlike many programs of public subsidies which involve long-term expenditure, the aid in question took advantage of the socioeconomic situation following the food safety alert. The program led to substantial economic savings and met its objectives swiftly, achieving excellent results in terms of removing most of the pesticides used in the “conventional production system”. In the 2006–2007 season, only 515 hectares in Almería used biological control organisms, four years later, it reached 20,081 hectares, and the average area during the last ten years was 24,953 hectares. This shows that Almeria’s green pest management revolution had been consolidated.