Around one-third of Switzerland’s vegetable imports come from Spain, much of it from the “sea of plastic” around Almería, the world’s largest greenhouse-growing region. A recent Swissinfo investigation shows that the model of cheap tomato production is coming under pressure – for reasons that are highly relevant to Switzerland as well.

On the one hand, growers’ toolbox is shrinking. Over the past 25 years, the EU has reduced the number of approved crop protection active substances from more than 1,000 to around 500. At the same time, retailers are imposing their own standards, often with even stricter residue limits, while remaining unwilling to increase retail prices. “Everyone wants to talk about sustainability, but still expects very low prices on supermarket shelves,” Spanish producer José Antonio Cánovas Zafra told Swissinfo. Even an increase of four euro cents per kilogram of melons is difficult to negotiate with retailers.

This is not sustainable for anyone. Sustainability has three dimensions – environmental, social and economic – yet the social and economic aspects are often ignored or interpreted too narrowly. True sustainability only exists when it works for everyone in the value chain and remains viable over the long term.

A New Plant Pathogen Every Two Years

These contradictions will not resolve themselves. “A new plant pathogen emerges every two years,” says Uri Krieger, Head of Research for Vegetable Seeds at Syngenta. Fewer available crop protection products are therefore meeting increasing pest and disease pressure.

This is the essence of the dilemma: if growers are expected to spray less, they need alternative solutions – but no one seems willing to pay for them.

The way forward lies in technology and in the companies developing it, such as agricultural technology company Syngenta. In the middle of the “sea of plastic” in El Ejido, Syngenta has opened a research centre designed to identify new diseases early and develop resistant varieties in record time. Such varieties can partially replace crop protection products or significantly reduce their use.

Using genetic markers, Syngenta has reduced the time needed to develop a resistant variety from six or seven years to just three or four. This is a practical approach, considering that developing a single new crop protection product costs around USD 300 million and requires approximately twelve years of development and testing.

Digitalisation also plays a key role. Vicasol, a growers’ cooperative in the region, invested six million euros in AI-based sorting systems and automation technologies for post-harvest processing. As a result, labour costs on some processing lines were reduced by around one-third.

For Switzerland, the lesson is straightforward: “Low prices in stores and sustainability for everyone along the value chain” cannot be achieved at no cost. If conventional crop protection tools are reduced, the lost tools must be replaced – otherwise pests, not the environment, will be the winners.

This replacement is being provided by companies such as Syngenta through more resistant varieties and by the sector as a whole through digitalisation. To ensure these solutions can deliver results, they require regulatory flexibility, particularly regarding new breeding technologies. Restricting innovation only deepens the dilemma instead of solving it.

Achieving genuine, measurable sustainability and resource efficiency requires more technology, not less.