Lanzarote is slowly beginning to recover from the devastating effects of the tropical storm that hit the entire Archipelago earlier this week. Despite the magnitude of the damage to a significant part of the Island's infrastructure, people are already doing everything possible to return life to its normal channels, although in the case of agriculture the losses have been catastrophic, especially in terms of the dispersion of the rofe, which is practically unrecoverable.
The technicians of the Cabildo's Roads Service are already working on placing signs and cleaning the most affected roads on the Island. One of the sections that has suffered the most damage is the one that goes from Teguise to Haría. On Friday morning, at least four teams from the First Institution were working on the multiple repairs that the road requires.
Farmers have also started working hard to recover at least part of the island's rofera infrastructure. LA VOZ went to a farm in Los Valles, where from early in the morning the farmers have been separating the mud from the picón to put the rofe back in its place. Potatoes were planted on this farm, and as the farmers pointed out, the next year's harvest has been lost here.
Catastrophe for agriculture
Some farms in the area have been completely destroyed, and as the Councilor for Agriculture of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Higinio Hernández, pointed out in statements to this newspaper, it is practically impossible to recover one hundred percent of the picón from the plantations, since it took decades to configure. "There are no words in the dictionary of the Spanish language that can appreciate the damage caused to the agricultural sector of Lanzarote and especially to the rofera infrastructure of the Island."
There are hardly any rofe extraction sites left on the Island. In this way, in addition to the time that would be necessary to return the plantations to their original state, "the farms will never be as they were, because it was our parents and grandparents who prepared this infrastructure, unique in the world".
The Ministry led by Hernández will insist from now on to the last consequences that the "competent bodies, such as the Ministry of Agriculture, declare the Island as a catastrophic zone". In this sense, the insular councilor asked that "the technicians" of the Ministry "come here to talk to the farmers" and thus know first-hand the desperation with which the farmers have witnessed the disappearance of the work of dozens of years.
"This cannot be fixed with money alone", Hernández pointed out. "If the rofera infrastructure is not recovered, this would no longer be Lanzarote, and for the primary sector" it would be a real chaos.
Losses in the agricultural sector
In addition to the dispersion of the rofe, which has mainly affected the northwest region of the Island, the harvests of all the vegetables, bananas, potatoes and sweet potatoes have been lost.
Regarding the cultivation of potatoes, Higinio Hernández explained, "now it is impossible to plant summer potatoes, because there are no possible human resources to fix all the damage caused by the storm".
