Seven years. Remember that figure because it will be key. For now, let’s talk about the great agricultural boom in recent years: the pistachio. Because yes, it is not only a “gastronomic fashion”, it is also an agro -productive trend that Spain has become the fourth country with more hectares.
Until now the stain has been the great pistache power, but Madrid wants to dispute it.
What does a plant like you in a place like this? The history of the Spanish pistachio is very curious: we know that the pistachios arrived in Spain in the Roman Empire, prospered during the Middle Ages (references can be found in the works of San Isidoro and in the Andalusian manuals) and then, simply, they disappeared.
As explained by Pablo García Estringana, researcher at the Madrid Institute for Rural, Agrarian and Food Research and Development (IMIDRA), “in the 70s and 80s there were attempts to reintroduce it in Catalonia and Aragon, but they did not work.” We had to wait at the end of the 80s, when “two other essays began, one in Castilla-La Mancha and another in Antequera, in the province of Malaga, the result of which it was seen that it could be a promising crop.”
It was not a simple path. José Francisco Couceiro began cultivating pistachios at the Agro -Environmental Research Center “El Chaparrillo” of Ciudad Real in 1987. It took 10 years just to dominate the crop and that the site was ideal. The pistachio tree asks for warm climates, low humidity and many hours of cold to fructify.
There, right there, is where Madrid enters. Because, although the pistachio has grown especially in the stain (where “hectares have multiplied almost 16 in the last decade”), nothing prevented other communities from betting on it. It is what they have done from the capital.
And they have done something late, in fact. Because the IMIDRA began working with these trees in 1999 and since 2001 has been trying to introduce it to the province. But only in recent years the situation has exploded: in 2020 there were about 400 hectares of pistachio in the region, today they have multiplied almost four to 1,700. Moreover, as Victor Rodríguez points out rightly, “only in the last year, in fact, they have doubled with respect to the around 800 that were at the end of 2023”.
The golden egg tree … And, on paper, the pistachio is the great fashion product: with an average of 6.5 euros per kilo, it is not for less. There is still much to unseat Castilla La Mancha, but Madrid farmers are determined to try. In fact, the pistachio has just overcome the almond tree in planted hectares. Especially in the Las Vegas region. And this has done nothing but start.
… but with a huge ‘but’. Since the first guns are planted and until the first harvest occurs, seven years pass. That is, the product is more profitable than normal, but it is not easy to take a production plantation. As explained in the newspaper of Spain, “an initial investment of about 5,000 or 6,000 euros per hectare and annual expenses of between 1,500 and 1,800 euros per hectare is needed.” That is what is changing the rules of the game.
Because the sunk cost of all this is huge. And although the demand remains superior to the supply, nobody knows what will happen exactly within ten years. It is not uncommon for the imidra to try to shorten the times, but that is just part of the problem. We are seeing how olive groves, limits or bananas are going through enormous problems due to lack of demand. How many pistachios are enough? What will happen when we reach that limit? What will happen to all those who in the midst of their “seven years in the desert”?
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In WorldOfSoftware | The most coveted merchandise in the black market is no longer the paladium or gold. They are the pistachios
