SOURCE: La Voz de Galicia
The shortage of bivalve predicts that prices will raise after years of containment.
Still a long month for big holiday events, but for the area of shellfish purification, the last season of the year is already underway. To fill the tables with all kinds of products, marketers usually start to stockpile material in the month of October. So, <<in theory, we are in full campaign,” noted yesterday Ramón Blanco, president of ‘Agade’. In theory, because “in practice, there is so little shellfish that is complicated to make stock,”.
In stock in the pools of purification plants, and without large amounts of shellfish at the auctions, the conclusion seems obvious. At the moment the law of supply and demand work, say the Galician purification plants workers, this Christmas, shellfish will cost the same as gold. After years of contention, it seems that this December is a month of large numbers at auctions. Species that are traditionally kept in an arc of balanced prices, it seems that this time will be also luxury goods. Cockle is the case, that at this time of year “raised 27 euro per kilogram in Noia” says a Cambados worker. Or pullet carpet shell, which is designated by the auctions less frequently than usual.
“With the clam and the cockle we can’t get back on our feet”, said the president of ‘Agade’. He is convinced that shellfish, especially the best pieces, “will raise their prices”. Remains to be seen, he says, if the market is able to take those quotations. Because the crisis is still there. and consumers can’t pay a lot of money.
For shellfish harvesters, that the Christmas season arrive with prices of periods of splendor would be a relief. Most of the brotherhoods draw their business strategies reserving for the final stretch of the year their best production areas. They open them in December to, precisely, maximize the days of best prices. However, apart from the immediate joy that can report a good price at auction, Fisherman’s Associations know that the situation of the producers of the Arousa estuary is dark. The production crisis may trigger prices at peak times, but the rest of the time results in loss of income, lack of profitability and poverty.
Let’s review the Christmas tables. The workers of ‘Arousa’ ensure that the campaign of the mussel is presented loaded of auspices. Red tide seems to have given respite to the ‘bateeiros’, allowing them to extract the bivalve that grows in the mussel ropes.
The crab, another star at Christmas, looks like it will also be sold at prices of gold in the auctions of ‘Arousa’. Despite catches are better this year than the last one, buyers are paying more than in 2013 by the king of crustaceans. Without going any further, in the market of ‘O Grove’, kilo of this product was sold last Monday nearly to 19 euro.
And the great scallop? The Fisherman’s Association of ‘Cambados’ do hope that the analyzes allow to open the extraction campaign, at the latest, on December 1st. Thus, the gutted product gutted will not miss its appointment with Christmas.
