'Visible from space': why Spain has the world's biggest concentration of greenhouses

Andalusia houses 'Europe's vegetable garden' - a laboratory of development and innovation producing vegetables for all of EuropeEurope's vegetable garden is in Andalusia, southern Spain. It is so vast that it can even be seen from space: if you open Google Maps and look west of Almería, you will see a white patch that looks like a glacier, but as you zoom in, you realise it is the highest concentration of greenhouses in the world. More than 30,000 hectares (74,131 acres) of land are covered in plastic, a geometric labyrinth five times the size of Manhattan, where 3.5m tons of vegetables are produced every year - from tomatoes to cucumbers, peppers to courgettes, aubergines to melons - enough to feed half a billion people and generate a turnover of more than 3bn euros.Workers prepare peppers inside the Hortamar cooperative, a fruit and vegetable producers' organisation in Roquetas de Mar, founded in 1977, that now has more than 240 members and sells throughout Europe, the US and Canada. Continue reading...