With the campaign almost finished, the sector reflects and prepares for the next year that, due to the alternance, can repeat a “bg harvest”. The objective is that the Asturian apple has assured the demand in the cider mills at profitable prices.
LA SIDRA.- The harvest season of the apple ends, one of the most important in the Asturian agricultural cycle that has marked the life of this society for generations. If the specialists involved in this sector agree on something, it is that in this country the picking of this fruit is complicated. The orographic singularity of Asturies makes it difficult to have machinery that supplies the hand of man or woman; a stumbling handicap that you do not have to face in other places, outside our borders, where the orography is flatter. This inevitably affects the production, and of course, the price.
The Asturian harvesters struggle to move their crops forward, but they do not always succeed. Last year the so-called “big harvest” caused, as the name suggests, an overproduction that many farmers were not able to place in the cider mills. This situation had its response in various manifestations, especially in Villaviciosa, in which it was reported that many of the fruits rot in the fields; either because the price at which the apple was being paid was even lower than the pickingcosts; or simply because the processors had their needs covered either with fruits from here or from outside.
