World Grain - December 2010 - 25

COUNTRYFOCUS

"They are merging into big groups," said Sarah Mann, manager of the United Kingdom's export promotion body British
Cereal Exports. She put total demand for wheat for the milling industry at 9.5 to 10.5 million tonnes. Three big groups,
Harinera Vilafranquina, which has a capacity of 4,100 tonnes
a day, La Meta and Grupo Regany are responsible for 60% to
70% of total production, she said.
The Spanish market is of vital importance to British exporters, and Mann visited Spanish importers in September.
"They take the highest proportion of U.K. wheat," she said.
"They took 1.1 million tonnes last year. They generally take
about 1 million tonnes from the U.K."
Mann noted that Spain has produced more wheat this year,
so its import requirement has been lower.
"They will be living off the domestic crop at least until the
end of the year," she said.
"They tend to take British UKp and UKs," she said, referring to the brands used by U.K. exporters for bread- and biscuitmaking wheat qualities. "Consumption of bread is down in Spain
because of the recession," she said. "People are wasting less than
they used to. They don't throw it away at the end of the day."
U.K. wheat also goes into animal feed use for Spanish customers, Mann said.
"We are competing with France and Germany. This year
with the German quality problems, (Spain) is looking to the
United States for its hard wheat."
Spain has a large livestock sector. According to the European
feed compounders association FEFAC, Spanish compound feed
production has been rising steadily, reaching more than 21 million tonnes in 2009, making Spain the biggest compound feed
producer in the E.U., narrowly beating France and Germany.
Compound feed production that year included 6.74 million
tonnes for the beef and dairy sector, 9.5 million for the pig
meat sector and 4.4 million for poultry. The figure also includes 744,000 tonnes of compound feed made for pets.
SMALL-SCALE AGRICULTURE
Traditionally, Spanish agriculture has consisted of a few
very large estates, with a large number of small farms. It remains the case. Even in 2007, the year for which the latest
E.U. figures are available, 52.8% of Spanish farmers worked
on five hectares or less. That compared with 24.75 in its northern neighbor, France, and an E.U. average of 70.4% (skewed
because of the very high number of small farms in some eastern European countries.)
At the same time, just 9.7% of Spanish farms were over 50
hectares in area, compared with 37.4% in France and an E.U.
average of 5.1%.
Spain is the world's biggest producer of olive oil with total
output around 700,000 tonnes in most years and with forays
up as high as 1.4 million tonnes in recent seasons, according to ASOLIVA, the Spanish Olive Oil Exporters Association, which represents 59 exporting companies. Spain is also
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