Los Llanos de Aridan, Spain, Sept. 24 (BUS): In more than 50 years of banana cultivation on the Spanish island of La Palma, Antonio Brito Alvarez has never witnessed anything like the devastation of the Cumbre Vieja volcano, which has been spewing out. of rocks and molten ash since Sunday.
“It’s all burned, scorched by the heat and wind…the bananas are completely burnt,” said Alvarez, 65, as he picked charred black fruit from a tree on his small farm in the heart of the farmland in Los Llanos de Aridan. Reuters reported.
Fruits that survive the scorching heat are spoiled by fine particles of hard volcanic dust, which fade into the banana peel, making them unsuitable for sale.
“This can’t be passed on to the fill-in worker,” he said.
Black lava walls have been slowly moving westward from the site of the eruption since Sunday, destroying homes, schools, churches and farms, all the way from Alvarez’s farm.
Despite his ruined harvest, Alvarez, who dropped out of school at the age of 13 to work in the fields, considers himself one of the lucky ones – neither his farm nor his home has been swallowed up by lava.
“When the houses were burned and destroyed… I went out on my own and started crying,” he said. “Please, just let it stop.”
With a tourism sector much smaller than nearby Tenerife or Gran Canaria, La Palma, an island of about 80,000 people in the Canary Islands archipelago, relies on banana cultivation for about half of its economic output.
The industry said the volcano has put about 15% of the island’s annual production at risk, putting up to 5,000 jobs at risk.
“There are already losses because bananas are in constant production. It’s a plant that requires fairly regular watering and almost daily work,” said Sergio Caceres, director of the Asprocan Banana Producers Association.
The island’s steep and rugged terrain is unsuitable for automation, which means farmers need daily access to tend their crops.
Authorities, who want to keep roads clear for emergency vehicles, have prevented local farmers from harvesting until Tuesday.
Alvarez warned that if the lava continues to flow toward the sea, it could come into contact with irrigation pipes feeding the entire area, adding: “This would be a very serious problem.”
NS