On 26/01/2014 12:25, Stewart Robert Hinsley wrote:
On 26/01/2014 11:27, Martin wrote:
On Sun, 26 Jan 2014 11:03:17 +0000, Stewart Robert Hinsley
wrote:

On 26/01/2014 10:41, Martin wrote:
On Sun, 26 Jan 2014 10:30:53 +0000, Stewart Robert Hinsley
wrote:

On 26/01/2014 09:54, David Hill wrote:
On 26/01/2014 09:31, Jimmy Dawkins wrote:
Morrocco now supplies 75% (ish) of ALL tomoatoes bought in Northern
Europe....

Where did you get that figure?

The FAO stats have Morocco as the worlds 17th largest producer.
However
Italy (7th largest) produces nearly 5 times as much, and Spain (9th
largest) 3 times as much. Russia (12th largest), Ukraine (13th
largest)
and Portugal (16th largest) also outproduce Morocco, with Greece (18th
largest) coming in just after.

In North Africa Egypt (5th largest) and Tunisia (15th largest) produce
more than Morocco.

It all depends on how much is produced for domestic consumption and
how
much for export, but I would have guessed that Spain was the largest
supplier to northern Europe. In the light of these figures I infer
that
there isn't a dominant supplier.

Since Morocco only produces 50% more tomatoes that the Netherlands it
would seem that even if Morocco was the only outside supplier and we
ignored the rest of northern European production (Belgium
production is
about a quarter of Dutch production) Morocco couldn't produce more
than
60% of the market.

Is this your source?
http://faostat.fao.org/site/567/Desk...geID=567#ancor

Yes and no. I did look there in the end for Dutch and Belgian
production, but the other figures I got indirectly from Wikipedia.

I started there, but it didn't show Belgium so I looked at the FAO
website

On
further digging I find that Poland produces about as much as the
Netherlands.

I suppose Jimmy Dawkins claim depends on the source of N Europe's
imports rather
than production figures.

Questions have been asked
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/...DOC+XML+V0//EN


According to those figures Moroccan exports to the whole of the EU are
less than Dutch production.

I found a site that claimed that 90% of Moroccan tomato production is
sold to
France.

How much of France is included in northern Europe?


What must be remembered when quoting all these figures is that in this
part of the world we consider tomatoes to be those grown under glass or
other protection whilst a lot of those grown in the Med ans north Africa
are field grown, these tend to be used for processing, canning, juice,
soup. purée etc. so don't really impact on those grown in northern climes.
David @ the side of Swansea bay where it's no longer raining for a bit.