This page describes the "sea of greenhouses" in Almería, southern Spain, as an example of intensive vegetable production in plastic-covered and greenhouse systems.
The central question is:
What happens when an entire landscape is oriented toward year-round, export-driven vegetable production under plastic – and what are the consequences for water, soil, people, the environment, and regional food systems?
Almería is not an isolated case.
The region clearly illustrates how modern food supply in Europe often functions:
This page serves as an inventory.
It describes not only the technical efficiency of this system but also its social and ecological costs.
The province of Almería features vast areas covered with greenhouses and plastic structures.
From above, the landscape looks like a white sea of plastic.
Crops grown there include:
This production enables large quantities of vegetables outside the natural growing season of many consumer regions.
At the same time, a system emerges that is heavily shaped by plastic, irrigation, nutrient control, labor migration, export logistics, and price pressure.
Almería raises a central question about European food:
What is the true cost of cheap vegetables when soil, water, labor, and the environment are fully accounted for?
In the supermarket, a tomato, pepper, or cucumber often appears as a simple product.
However, behind this product may lie:
Almería is therefore not just an agricultural issue.
It is a societal issue.
The central question is not:
Are vegetables from greenhouses inherently wrong?
Rather:
Under what conditions are they produced – and who bears the consequences?
This includes further questions:
The greenhouses of Almería are not isolated operations within a landscape.
In some areas, they are the landscape.
This means:
This form of agriculture is highly productive.
But it largely separates plants from natural cycles.
The land is not primarily managed as a living ecosystem but as a controlled production space.
Almería is located in a dry region.
Water is not an abundant resource there.
However, intensive vegetable production requires reliable irrigation.
This creates a structural tension:
Water thus becomes a core issue.
When vegetables are produced for distant markets, not only goods leave the region.
Water is also indirectly exported.
In southern Spain, various regions demonstrate how quickly intensive irrigation agriculture can reach ecological limits.
When water extraction consistently exceeds natural replenishment, a structural crisis emerges.
Possible consequences include:
Such a system may appear productive in the short term.
In the long term, it can undermine its own foundation.
The sea of greenhouses relies heavily on plastic.
Plastic is used in:
Plastic enables control.
It protects plants, retains heat, regulates humidity, and facilitates production.
At the same time, it creates a massive waste and microplastic problem.
Intensive plastic-covered and greenhouse systems generate large amounts of plastic waste.
The problem arises when films, hoses, nets, or packaging:
Plastic does not simply disappear.
It breaks down into smaller particles.
These can affect soils, water, animals, microorganisms, and potentially even food chains.
In such systems, soil is often treated differently than in field-based, regenerative agriculture.
Depending on the operation, there may be:
This can yield high harvests.
But the question remains:
Is soil fertility being built up?
Or is the soil primarily used as a controlled production base?
Greenhouse production often involves precise nutrient supply.
This can appear efficient.
At the same time, an input logic emerges:
If nutrients are not fully absorbed, they can enter waterways or groundwater.
If substrates, nutrient solutions, and residues are not managed properly, additional burdens arise.
Greenhouse systems can reduce pest pressure but also create their own problems.
In warm, dense, humid, and production-intensive systems, diseases and pests can spread quickly.
Plant protection can therefore play an important role.
Depending on the system, this may include:
The exact burden depends heavily on the operation, the crop, the year, and legal requirements.
The problem is not just individual active ingredients.
The problem is a production logic in which plants are constantly under pressure and ecological self-regulation is limited.
A key issue in Almería is working conditions.
Greenhouse production is labor-intensive.
Many workers are migrants.
Reports have described problems for years, such as:
These conditions are not incidental.
They are part of the real cost structure of cheap food.
A food system based on undignified working conditions is not sustainable.
This holds true even if the product is fresh, affordable, and outwardly flawless.
The question is:
What kind of food do we want to eat when its availability relies on the invisibility of other people?
Dignified agriculture requires:
Cheap vegetables must not come at the expense of the people who grow and harvest them.
The region has repeatedly documented informal and highly precarious housing for migrant workers.
Such settlements do not arise by chance.
They are an expression of a system that needs labor but does not adequately assume social responsibility for these people.
When people live under plastic, sheet metal, or makeshift shelters while producing food for Europe, a fundamental contradiction becomes apparent.
The problem is not just local.
It also affects importing countries.
Because their supermarkets, retail chains, and consumers benefit from low prices.
Almería does not produce only for Spain.
A large portion of the goods goes to European markets, including:
Supermarket chains often demand:
This pressure is passed on to the production region.
There, it affects farms, workers, water, soil, and the landscape.
Cheap vegetables from Almería are not simply inexpensive.
Part of the costs are externalized.
Costs that can be externalized include:
The price in the supermarket does not reflect the full reality.
It only shows the price visible at the checkout.
Another problem is the loss of seasonal awareness.
When tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and other summer vegetables are available year-round, many people lose their sense of:
Such a supply system may make people appear less dependent on seasons.
In reality, it makes them more dependent on distant production systems.
When supermarkets offer cheap vegetables from intensive production regions year-round, regional vegetable farms come under pressure.
They then compete with products whose ecological and social costs are not fully reflected in the price.
This weakens:
The question is therefore not only:
What happens in Almería?
But also:
What happens in the regions that import such goods?
Greenhouse, plastic-covered, and substrate systems are particularly problematic when:
Then, food supply may appear efficient.
In reality, it becomes vulnerable and unjust.
A different approach would not simply mean:
more technology.
Rather:
more responsibility.
This includes:
This page belongs to the section:
Inventory of agriculturally used land
There, the focus is on which land uses particularly affect soil, water, biodiversity, and people.
Almería shows that an inventory is not just about the soil.
It also concerns:
From a TEIKEI perspective, Almería serves as an important counterexample.
It illustrates where food supply can lead when organized primarily around availability, price, standardization, and export logic.
TEIKEI asks differently:
The local-first logic of the Agora marketplace starts exactly here.
First, what is regionally available is made visible.
Regional farms, regional harvest shares, regional pickup points, and regional processing take center stage.
Only when something is not meaningfully available regionally can further circles be considered.
A central cultural question is:
Does every vegetable need to be available at all times?
Or can food culture relearn:
When everything must always be available, systems like Almería often emerge.
When regions sustain their own supply, a different food culture develops.
This page does not replace a detailed study of Almería.
It summarizes key problem areas that repeatedly emerge in reports, investigations, and studies on intensive greenhouse agriculture in southern Spain.
For specific statements about individual operations, the following are needed:
This page provides an initial orientation for the inventory.
Almería shows that cheap availability can be expensive.
Expensive for water.
Expensive for soils.
Expensive for workers.
Expensive for regional agriculture.
Expensive for the environment.
A vegetable that seems affordable in the supermarket may in reality carry high costs that are paid elsewhere.
A different food culture begins where regions ask again:
What can we sustain ourselves?
What grows here in a meaningful way?
What work is behind it?
What conditions are dignified?
And which food supply truly strengthens soil, water, people, and the environment?
One level up: Inventory of agriculturally used land
Author: Felix Schröder, with AI assistance (ChatGPT)
Creation: written by Felix Schröder › formatted in Markdown by ChatGPT › published by Felix Schröder › layout adjusted by Claude
Created: 2026-05-17 · Last updated: 2026-05-17 · Questions or suggestions? support@teikei.us