Strawberries versus Iberian Lynxes



There was a time when red, juicy and tasty strawberries heralded the coming of the summer, the long school holidays and with luck the odd picnics in the forest when one of the delights was to end the banquet of homemade patés and cold fowl from the yard with one of my Gran´s strawberry tarts. Cholesterol had not been invented. We then lost ourselves in the thickness of the fabulous forest around us. The grown-ups napped in the shade or played cards and the ants finished the crumbs of the strawberry tart.

When the sun started its journey down we took the road home, pushing the old pram that had held the homemade feast on the way in and the dirty dishes on the way back. I cannot remember any left-overs. Any spare space in the improvised trolley was jammed with treasures from the forest: beautiful pieces of bark, leaves we were going to dry within the pages of our favourites books, feathers from the thousands of birds living up the trees, a dry snake skin that its occupant had discarded because it got the new model of the season, a dead praying mantis in perfect condition, big balls of moss we were going to put around the geraniums at home and many other marvels that were going to keep us busy until next time in the woods.

We had to create our own amusements. There was no TV and the old Marconi radiogram could have been worked with pedals for all I know. Trying to listen to anything was a trial for the ears and the brain. When eventually somebody was lucky enough to have some sort of clear reception my grandfather immediately turned the dials in the other direction to get "a better sound". Invariably he lost the whole thing or got onto a foreign station through a fog of static. We gave up the ghost and busied ourselves endlessly rearranging our forest and beach treasures to match the stories that we were forever digging out of our grey cells. My loathing of TV, radio, videos, computer games and outside loos must spring from that era in my life.

One bitter winter we innocently asked Gran to bake us a strawberry tart. She looked at us as if we had slapped her face with a dead mackerel.

"Strawberries in winter?!" she shrieked, kicking the family cat inadvertently in her agitation. The cat got agitated as well in the fray and jumped on his favourite spot which was the open flap to the coals in the old kitchen range. Tommy, the cat, fell into a deep slumber and later caught fire. He had not noticed. Only the appalling smell of burning fur got us all out of bed. Tommy was doused in the ever present bucket of water in the kitchen, dried with an old rag and put firmly back on his straw in the outer shed. Tommy had an important duty. He had to keep the mice population down which he did very well. There was no such thing as pet food in cans, pouches, trays and biscuits. The very idea would have sent us laughing like hyenas.

Winter was for apple tarts, rhubarb compotes for spring and strawberries and peaches for early summer. Plums of all colours announced the already shortening days of early autumn. We lived and ate according to the seasons.

Not anymore. Most consumers, even on modest incomes, demand anything and everything at any time of the year. Years ago, in a corner shop in UK, a young woman was yelling at the Indian shopkeeper who kept a perfect Asiatic cool:"Whoa?? No flipping scampi?? Me hubby laikes ´is scampi for ´is teea ´e does. ´e won´t be ´alf f….. mad ´e will!". Obviously there was not much furniture left in the attic of that one and I wondered what hubby ended up with on his plate. Asparagus with hollandaise sauce from a jar no doubt.




The demand for food out of season is having an unexpected and distressing impact on the environment.

The pine forest that borders the most important 108.000 hectares of wetland conservation area in Europe, the Doñana, South West of Seville, hides hundreds of plastic tunnels where strawberries are ready to pick as early as the beginning of January. Despite the assurances by the growers that they have permission from the Town Halls (it is quite well known at the moment that Mayors are rather generous with their permissions..) to use council land, drill wells, sometimes as deep as 30 metres, the whole industry is totally illegal according to the Medio Ambiente ( Department of Environment ). The electricity that works the pumps is illegally tapped and the pickers are illegal immigrants.

Mr. Serrano is employed by the Medio Ambiente in Madrid and has so far closed "provisionally" 220 of those strawberry farms. "It is far too few but we have not got sufficient resources for such a task. It is also a big social problem as those villages depend on the strawberry harvest for their living. People were not aware of the environmental consequences."

Short term outlook to feed the greed of supermarkets in Britain, Germany and Holland.

Long term tragedy for the wild life. Creeks that dribbled into the Unesco Natural World Heritage of Doñana have dwindled to a trickle and are strangled by filthy sheets of discarded plastic. Those creeks were natural corridors, migrations routes and drinking water for endangered animals now on the brink of extinction: the Iberian lynx, the otter, the Egyptian mongoose and the genet. Deprived of those natural corridors those creatures dash onto the roads and are run over. The Rocina creek that used to feed lagoons where flamingos, storks and herons stopped to feed and preen is now bone dry from July to October. The birds have gone elsewhere.

Eventually the deep lagoons will dry up. The dunes will erode and Europe's most important wetlands will go back to scrub. Hundreds of thousands of wild birds will have flown somewhere else. The endangered species will be extinct.

All that for eating strawberries in January. Guido Schmidt, the head of Spain´s WWWF freshwater program is promoting a code of practice amongst the big European supermarkets to ensure that they buy only from legal farms. Already a supermarket chain in the Netherlands is attaching a small leaflet to each punnet explaining the protection of the Doñana. Britain is dragging its feet as usual. Both legal and illegal farms complain of an over demanding British market that pushes them to the limit. I suppose that there are thousands bird brains like my young lady in the Indian corner shop who demand produce at a flick of a chipped nail. There are many lifts in Britain that have a defect: they never get to the top floor.

Schmidt has also come up with a proposition to subsidise illegal farmers into relocation. Easier said than done. Relocation is a four letter word in any language; too many social issues blur the real problem in hands. Producers in Huelva know that their region is saturated and relocation might be the answer. Mañana…

In the mean time the ground water is disappearing, the irrigation water becomes saltier, scarcer and rendered useless by an excess of minerals and fertilizers.

At the end there won´t be any choice: production stopped or relocation. By then it might be too late. The mighty Guadalquivir and the Atlantic ocean will still meet but the wetlands they create will be no more.

The Huelva strawberries are on sale now. They look beautiful and taste of turnips. Our local supermarket was doing a promotion on them last Saturday. Some illuminated sales girl had cut slices of strawberries on a plate and smothered the lot with spray can cream that is propelled by laughing gas used by dentists long time ago. The cocktail sticks were a thoughtful gesture, the combination diabolical.

We shall wait for the real thing. On the debate strawberries versus lynxes I know which side I am on.

Jocelyne