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Unraveling a Hydroponics Controversy · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hello there, welcome to Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
• 0:05
  I'm your host, Dr. Russell Sharp, and I'm the owner of Utrema Limited,
• 0:10
  this company here where we manufacture specialist inputs for hydroponics and
• 0:15
  sports turf and crops, and our hero product is a product called Gold Leaf in
• 0:19
  the US or Liquid Gold in the UK.
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  If you're in the UK or you're anywhere else in Europe, you've probably eaten
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  fruit and vegetables from a country that most people have never heard of and
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  that's because if you buy your fruits and vegetables from supermarket a lot
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  of things like cherry tomatoes are grown in what it says on the on the packet morocco.
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  However there's been a bit of controversy currently because they're actually
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  being grown in western sahara which is a which has sort of been taken over by
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  morocco what would we describe it as it's not a colony but they consider it
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  their land so they've they've taken it,
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  a bit like Ukraine and Russia.
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  But this was a while back and this happened in, I'm just looking at a Wikipedia
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  page, when did it occur? In the 70s.
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  And it used to be a Spanish colony, it used to be Sahara Occidental in Spanish Sahara.
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  So Spain made a mess of decolonising this area of land and Morocco laid claim
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  to it and administered a large section of it.
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  However, there is also So an independence group called the Polizaria Front.
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  So in the Moroccan administered areas, there's lots of hydroponic and conventional
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  production of horticultural crops, and they've been labelled as Moroccan on the labels,
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  and this is against EU regulations.
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  So Spain and France are complaining of the mislabelling of tomatoes,
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  and particularly, and I think they've done other crops like squashes as well in the past.
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  So it's a bit of a strange one really because if i
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  was spain i wouldn't be causing too much
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  of an issue here because they messed up decolonizing it
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  and you know there's lots of well this
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  sporadic fighting and things like this i think involved and
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  the human rights issues and things like this so really not
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  really worth fighting over some cherry tomatoes
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  the there is issue with tomatoes and
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  other horticultural crops that come in from morocco being destroyed by
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  french and spanish farmers when they get imported because obviously free trade
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  is only good when it benefits you not when it benefits other people so just
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  like when they used to burn lorries full of lambs coming in from the uk look
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  that one up that's what blasts from the past.
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  They didn't like the competition i think it is when it comes to saharan
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  and moroccan tomatoes those so it's an interesting one
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  obviously a lot of tomatoes are grown in
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  almeria in down in spain and southernmost tip
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  but there are also burgeoning horticultural trade in morocco lots and lots of
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  blueberries are grown in morocco lots of samphire as i've talked about in the
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  past that's grown in morocco but where how do you know whether it's grown in
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  western sahara or morocco at
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  the moment you don't basically i think the european union is just going to,
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  put lots of fines in and that seems
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  to be where they tend to operate there are
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  also spanish enclaves on the top of morocco suerta i think that's one that's
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  where all the illegal immigrants rush the border and tens of hundreds of thousands
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  of illegal immigrants get into europe that way and so a few colonies left there
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  in north africa that spain hasn't properly.
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  Decolonized they have a go as the british for gibraltar but
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  they've got certainly they've got a lot more colonies up there if you look
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  into it and causes a lot of problems like this one so
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  yeah it's a controversial one how
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  do we know where our food is coming from how do
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  we know it's being grown if it's being mislabeled there
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  are lots of other mislabeling issues in supermarkets
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  where a lot of the big supermarkets started making up
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  fake farms and putting fake farms down as
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  the suppliers because they were just relabeling product
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  from elsewhere imported so they gave british sounding
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  farm names to the produce so yeah
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  a bit of a controversial one has anyone been to western sahara
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  i've never been to western sahara don't really fancy
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  i don't like the heat it's currently 32 degrees celsius here
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  in the middle of england and it's
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  way too hot for me so maybe in the winter i'll
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  go to the atlas mountains in morocco or somewhere like that somewhere colder.
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  But yeah if you've seen any pictures of got
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  any good resources of western savara and hydroponics and i'd love to hear
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  about it some of the hydroponic setups
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  in morocco are massive like the the
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  fertilizer mixing sheds are larger than
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  say a hectare or something like that they're crazy big
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  and yeah it's a massive growth growth area there's lots of trade shows horticultural
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  trade shows in morocco not sure of about western sahara it's i think it's a
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  bit less secure an area to go traveling in but if you've been there let me know
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  and i'd love to do a follow-up episode on it thank you very much for listening goodbye.