Food waste is an overlooked but structural feature of intensive greenhouse agriculture and salmon farming. In Almería it is visible in discarded crops and surplus production, while in aquaculture it remains largely unseen, embedded in feed inefficiency and losses on farms, and mortality within the pens.
Tomatoes and peppers are discarded - edible but apparently unsuitable
In Almería’s greenhouses, food waste is a routine outcome of intensive production and volatile markets. Vegetables are discarded for cosmetic imperfections, price collapses, or oversupply, often dumped on unused land between greenhouses or sent to composting facilities outside populated areas. The scale of this disposal reflects a system that operates with minimal scrutiny, where waste is treated as an expected by-product rather than a failure.
In salmon farming, waste is less visible but equally embedded in the production model. Uneaten feed, fish mortalities, and processing losses accumulate in the water or are managed through clandestine removal, rarely entering public awareness. Although harder to see than discarded crops, this waste reflects the same logic of overproduction and efficiency, where losses are accepted as a cost of doing business and environmental (and animal welfare) consequences are absorbed by surrounding ecosystems.
Entire crops are sometimes abandoned when prices collapse or buyers withdraw, turning food into waste overnight. Piles of tomatoes dumped between greenhouses reveal how market volatility, rather than scarcity, determines whether food is eaten or deliberately wasted.
An entire tomato crop is dumped as due to wholesale price problems
Vegetables are frequently discarded for minor imperfections, cosmetic flaws, or light pest damage that pose no risk to consumption. Thrown into skips for composting, this rejected produce exposes how market standards prioritise uniform appearance over nourishment, turning edible food into waste.
Produce is often discarded for minor cosmetic flaws
These vegetables are left to rot in the sun before being composted
Dead salmon are routinely removed from crowded pens, where disease and stress spread quickly through dense populations. Scooped out as they begin to rot, these fish reveal how mortality is built into intensive aquaculture rather than an exception.
Large numbers of salmon die from overcrowding and disease
Their rotting carcasses are regularly removed and boxed
Composting is presented as a solution for greenhouse waste, with trucks delivering plant biomass to processing sites alongside discarded tomatoes. In reality, the volume of waste far exceeds local composting capacity, exposing the limits of these systems and leaving much of the greenhouse area without viable sustainable waste treatment options.
Large amounts of waste products are combined with plant biomass and soil (and plastic) and composted
Extreme weather events and shifting climate patterns due to the climate crisis are making greenhouse crops increasingly vulnerable to loss. For migrant labourers, these disruptions carry social and economic consequences, as unpredictable harvests threaten wages, working conditions, and the precarious livelihoods of those most exposed to the system’s risks.
Extreme hail damage in 2024 destroyed many crops
Some older greenhouses entirely collapsed
Some farmers respond to surplus or discarded crops by feeding them to livestock, creating on-farm solutions to food waste. These practices are often poorly regulated, and the feed can contain plastics and other contaminants, posing risks to animal health and safety.
Some waste crops are fed to livestock
The scale of food loss across the greenhouses in Almería and salmon farms in Northern Europe reveals how deeply inefficiency is built into industrial agri-food systems. If waste was prevented, and surplus or imperfect produce redirected for consumption, it could feed communities, reduce environmental pressures, and transform food into a resource valued for nourishment rather than profit.
Much of the food waste in Almería is discarded in the environment, left to rot in the sun