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‘There are estates which can make you soulless’ said one farmer
Dec 6, 2017 - 12:59 PM
Iberian ham, at risk from a killing plaque
‘There are estates which can make you soulless’ said one farmer
Dec 6, 2017 - 12:59 PM
The Spanish mountains and meadows are thriving now – From November until January, 700,000 Iberian pigs graze completely freely to complete the texture of the land and to create the best ham in the world. Said animals can graze as far as 14 kilometres every day combing the Oak forest floor to fatten up on acorns.
Some mystical brands of Iberian ham, as ‘Cinco Jotas’ which contains each piglet of pure Iberian race inside a plot between 2 and 6 hectares in size. To put on 1 kilo of weight the Iberian pig needs to eat 12 kilos of acorns and 5 kilos of grass. ‘They are the firemen of the meadows, who clean away all the bracken and remains’ resumed the president of the Spanish Association for Iberian Pig Breeders, Lucía Maesso.
Always, these distant meadows are controlled in a measured and sustainable way. A scenery of coexistence between farmers and those raising livestock over vast stretches of meadowland. The ideal way to stop the plague of forest fires, as proven in Extremadura where fires as not as common. Here nobody is scared to live amongst the mountain forests, the pigs take care of the ecosystem over the winter months.
However, Lucía Maesso warned that ‘the meadows don’t only produce acorns’ – speaking as a fifth generation local family, her estate is 600 hectares at Fuente del Arco (Badajoz) where the killing plague has arrived. ‘I have not thrown my hands into the air, fewer than 100 hectares have been affected’. Her Holm and Cork Oaks are showing symptoms of the fungus for which there is no cure – Phytophthora cinnamomi – a fungus which attacks the roots, suffocates the tree and makes the subsoil useless around the roots.
This fungus known in Spain as ‘La Seca’ (the dry) and in English as ‘dieback’ was seen in the 40’s and practically ignored until the 80’s when it was seen spreading across the meadows. ‘It moves at a moderate but stable pace. There is no remedy, it is lethal’ resumed an engineer from the Extremadura Centre for Scientific and Technological Investigations, Enrique Cardillo. The ‘army’ of this fungus had reached in 2010 5,000 outbreaks only in Extremadura, and its growth has spread as far away as Huelva, Salamanca and Castilla-La Mancha. Lamentably also in Portugal – the world producer of cork.
‘The farmers are a little lost’ recognised Maesso. The managers of the Holm Oaks also. ‘The problem is biodiversity becomes fractured – the natural order of things which control the ecosystems are broken’, lamented president of the Holm Oaks Forum and Asaja union for small farmers, José Luis García Palacios. His colleague at the Salamanca Forestry Association, Jesús Castaño, completed the diagnosis and believes that ‘bad forestry management and the lack of the natural regeneration of land’. He also laments that there are no preventative measures to treat the threatened areas, apart from keeping the livestock away to not extend the plague of this fungus.
Many of the 700,000 pigs are now eating acorns in the mountains, acting as involuntary ‘spreaders’ of the fungus as one expert in the field explained, Carmen Rodríguez ‘this pathogen is multiplied underground when there is free running water, causing damage to the roots. It can be dispersed by water or particles of infected earth, moved on the wheels of vehicles, and even on the shoes of people’
Halting this would involve a ‘complete change in how the ecosystems of the meadows from normality’ insisted Rodríguez and this is controversial for many farmers.
One Holm Oak tree grows no more than 25 kilos of acorns, three days for an Iberian pig who devours some 8 kilos of acorns a day.
Farmers and maintainers of the meadows accuse the administrations of showing little interest. But there are several teams of experts from universities and environmental bodies who have been searching in coordination for years for a solution.
Meanwhile, they request to ‘not dramatize’ – ‘the plague is very slow moving which leads to its danger being underestimated, but when we run out of acorns what happens then?’ admitted Jesús Castaño.
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Some mystical brands of Iberian ham, as ‘Cinco Jotas’ which contains each piglet of pure Iberian race inside a plot between 2 and 6 hectares in size. To put on 1 kilo of weight the Iberian pig needs to eat 12 kilos of acorns and 5 kilos of grass. ‘They are the firemen of the meadows, who clean away all the bracken and remains’ resumed the president of the Spanish Association for Iberian Pig Breeders, Lucía Maesso.
Always, these distant meadows are controlled in a measured and sustainable way. A scenery of coexistence between farmers and those raising livestock over vast stretches of meadowland. The ideal way to stop the plague of forest fires, as proven in Extremadura where fires as not as common. Here nobody is scared to live amongst the mountain forests, the pigs take care of the ecosystem over the winter months.
However, Lucía Maesso warned that ‘the meadows don’t only produce acorns’ – speaking as a fifth generation local family, her estate is 600 hectares at Fuente del Arco (Badajoz) where the killing plague has arrived. ‘I have not thrown my hands into the air, fewer than 100 hectares have been affected’. Her Holm and Cork Oaks are showing symptoms of the fungus for which there is no cure – Phytophthora cinnamomi – a fungus which attacks the roots, suffocates the tree and makes the subsoil useless around the roots.
This fungus known in Spain as ‘La Seca’ (the dry) and in English as ‘dieback’ was seen in the 40’s and practically ignored until the 80’s when it was seen spreading across the meadows. ‘It moves at a moderate but stable pace. There is no remedy, it is lethal’ resumed an engineer from the Extremadura Centre for Scientific and Technological Investigations, Enrique Cardillo. The ‘army’ of this fungus had reached in 2010 5,000 outbreaks only in Extremadura, and its growth has spread as far away as Huelva, Salamanca and Castilla-La Mancha. Lamentably also in Portugal – the world producer of cork.
‘The farmers are a little lost’ recognised Maesso. The managers of the Holm Oaks also. ‘The problem is biodiversity becomes fractured – the natural order of things which control the ecosystems are broken’, lamented president of the Holm Oaks Forum and Asaja union for small farmers, José Luis García Palacios. His colleague at the Salamanca Forestry Association, Jesús Castaño, completed the diagnosis and believes that ‘bad forestry management and the lack of the natural regeneration of land’. He also laments that there are no preventative measures to treat the threatened areas, apart from keeping the livestock away to not extend the plague of this fungus.
Many of the 700,000 pigs are now eating acorns in the mountains, acting as involuntary ‘spreaders’ of the fungus as one expert in the field explained, Carmen Rodríguez ‘this pathogen is multiplied underground when there is free running water, causing damage to the roots. It can be dispersed by water or particles of infected earth, moved on the wheels of vehicles, and even on the shoes of people’
Halting this would involve a ‘complete change in how the ecosystems of the meadows from normality’ insisted Rodríguez and this is controversial for many farmers.
One Holm Oak tree grows no more than 25 kilos of acorns, three days for an Iberian pig who devours some 8 kilos of acorns a day.
Farmers and maintainers of the meadows accuse the administrations of showing little interest. But there are several teams of experts from universities and environmental bodies who have been searching in coordination for years for a solution.
Meanwhile, they request to ‘not dramatize’ – ‘the plague is very slow moving which leads to its danger being underestimated, but when we run out of acorns what happens then?’ admitted Jesús Castaño.
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