kilos

more hectares, more kilos and more uncertainty

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Extremadura has just started the campaign for one of the crops in which it stands out not only nationally but also internationally. European scale: tobacco. In recent days, the seedlings have begun to leave the nurseries towards the regions where around 98% of all ‘tobacco made in Spain’ production is concentrated. The news is interesting not only because of what it means for regions such as Campo Arañielo, La Vera, Alagón, Talayuela or Navalmoral de la Mata, where tobacco farmers work. This year the sector is grabbing attention also due to the context, marked by two apparently contradictory factors: uncertainty and the increase in both cultivated hectares and contracted merchandise. Is it going to be cultivated more? That’s how it is. Coinciding with the start of the Extremaduran campaign, the National Federation of Tobacco Growers confirmed A few days ago, the Efe Agro agency reported that 6,496 hectares will be planted this year, almost 7% more than last year. The figure is still very far from the cultivated area at the beginning of the last decade, when in Spain the 10,000 hectaresbut maintains the growth trend of recent years. In fact, it exceeds the data from 2022, 2023 and 2024 registered by the Government. While waiting for the final balance of 2025, last year the sector spoke of an area of 6,400 ha throughout the country. The cultivated land is not the only thing that increases. There are signs that also indicate an increase in the amount of tobacco reserved by operators in the sector. The Interprofessional Tobacco Organization of Spain (Oitab) has increased its hiring in Extremadura to 23.69 million kilos, about 723,600 kilos more than in 2025. The public firm Cetarsa ​​will also buy 5% more than last season, which is equivalent to 16.65 million kilos. Additionally, Deltafina will buy 3.62 million and Mella 3.41. Is this good news for the sector? The director of Oitab defends that the increase is “very positive” and recalls that the sector has been growing for five years. However, it is not all good news for Extremaduran farmers, who this campaign will be forced to deal with a scenario marked by uncertainty. The hangover from the Iran war will force them to deal with the rising fuel price and of fertilizersbut above all they are focused on something else: the yield of the harvest. As they explain farmers to The Newspapercultivating more hectares does not necessarily mean that you will earn more money. In fact, 7% more planted area does not guarantee that they will harvest 7% more tobacco. In March Asaja I already warned of the consequences that restrictions on certain phytosanitary products will have. Specifically, the organism critical two measures: the veto of Dichloroprene 1.3 and the restrictions on Metam Sodium. Is it that important? Dionisio Sánchez, manager of the Agrarian Transformation Society (SAT) Asociación Agrupación TAB, the largest producer cooperative, he complained recently in The Newspaper that the sector does not have the same resources as other years to treat the fields, and warned of the consequences of these restrictions: “We do not have means of production.” “Yields are going to decrease, many farmers have put in more hectares to see if they can get the same kilos,” insisted. Added to this factor is another that also explains the increase in cultivated area: the gradual loss of attractiveness of corn has led some farmers to abandon the cereal and switch to tobacco. The group is also not entirely satisfied with the prices of the companies that work with their crops. For example, although Cetarsa ​​will slightly increase the money it pays for each kilo of tobacco, there are those in the sector who believe that it is not enough. Especially since the calculations were made before the war in Iran affected the prices of two key inputs for farmers (both those dedicated to tobacco in Extremadura and the rest): diesel fuel and fertilizer. This change of scenery is probably kept in mind. in junewhen the contracted volumes are reviewed. Is it just agriculture? No. As the sector frequently insists, the tobacco industry has an economic and social dimension that goes beyond the cultivated plots. Fernando Vaquero, director of Oitab, remembers for example that in Extremadura alone there are around 20,000 families that depend on the crop. Last year AFI and the Tobacco Table published a study that estimates that the sector generates 69 million of euros of added value in Extremadura and support some 1,050 direct jobs. How does it affect the population? If the data were not important in itself, there is another factor to take into account: a good part of this economic pulse beats in rural areas, which demonstrates for the sector its value when establishing “productive fabric and local employment.” If the focus is expanded and goes beyond agriculture, AFI calculates that tobacco will leave Extremadura 126 million. To this impact we should add the one it leaves in Castilla y León, Castilla-La Mancha or Extremadura (where there are also plantations) and the Canary Islands, Cantabria and Madrid, which also benefit from the industry’s production chain. Perhaps to support this activity, the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Sustainable Development of Extremadura recently announced that it would allocate five million euros to help Integrated Tobacco Production to 500 farmers. Is everything positive for the sector? No. Even though the cultivated area grows this year in Extremadura, the ministry’s data show that Spain continues to dedicate much less land to the tobacco used in 2014. Production is also clearly lower. It is not something that happens only in our country. The EU recognize that cultivation has been progressively decreasing in recent decades, and in a clear way as well: from 400,000 t at the beginning of the 90s it went to 140,000 t in 2018, a year in which the cultivated area at the community level was around 66,000 ha, half that of 2001. This trend coincides with a clear decrease in tobacco consumption worldwide, largely … Read more

We thought this bug was a pig. Now we know that it was two meters tall, weighed a thousand kilos and was a killing machine related to whales.

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Almost 200 years ago, a paleontologist found some completely improbable bones. They thought about it a thousand times, tried to find some sense in it; but everything ended in the same delirious image: that of a huge pig with the capacity to destroy everything in front of it. And that’s what we called him for decades: the ‘pig from hell’. What we have just discovered, two centuries later, is that we know almost nothing about them. Now they are even more terrible. But what really is a ‘hell pig’? It is the popular nickname by which entelodonts are known; an extinct family of large prehistoric mammals that lived about 30 million years ago. The bug was described for the first time in the 1840sbut it was in the early 20th century that paleontologists assumed it was closely related to pigs or peccaries. It was not something irrational: on a strictly physical level, entelodonts looked very similar to modern-day pigs. Two meters tall, weighing more than a thousand kilos and jaws capable of crushing bones, but pigs nonetheless. With “crushing bones” we are falling short. Recently, a team from Vanderbilt University could examine in detail the teeth of these animals and, thanks to three-dimensional models of dental microwear, they have managed to turn around everything we thought we knew about the role of these animals in North American ecosystems 30 million years ago. Your conclusions they leave no room for doubt: “the largest specimens were capable of crushing bones with an efficiency similar to or even greater than that of lions and hyenas.” Luckily, they weren’t very smart; And, according to the researchers, “it has a brain-body relationship similar to that of reptiles, so they were very unintelligent creatures.” A complex story. At first, experts thought that this monstrous animal was a born hunter. Then, partly because of this familiarity with pigs, they came to the conclusion that they were omnivorous animals, capable of eating small animals and carrion. Now, thanks to this team, we know that they were most likely at the top of the food chain of their ecosystems. This, in fact, raises the possibility that different species (or subspecies) occupied different ecological niches. However, there are curious things. To begin with, entelodonts have nothing to do with pigs. In fact, they are closer to whales and hippos than anything else. But, above all, it shows us the difficulties we continue to have in understanding our past. Little by little, we are understanding that if our way of looking at the past conditions the futureour ability to understand what the world was like 30 million years ago will radically change many things we think we are. And the best thing is that, even though I get melancholic and retrospective, everything we know makes it clear that the “pig from hell” is more infernal than ever. Image | Carnegie Museum of Natural History In Xataka | The deaths of cows, reindeer or rhinos are not a mystery: they are the consequences of a curse, that of “large animals”

The first nest of Asian hornets in Andalusia was more than seven kilos and had thousands of larvae about to emerge. It’s not good news

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The 7.5 kilo nest, located 10 meters high in a pine tree in Alhaurín de la Torre. This mass full of thousands of larvae has the dubious honor of being the first Asian wasp nest detected in Andalusia. A species that, it is worth remembering has killed three people in Galicia in the last two weeks. “We caught it on time,” explained Alvaro Garciafrom the pest control company Lucanus. “If we had left it a few more days, hundreds of fertile queens would have emerged, and that would be unstoppable.” And yet, the relief of having stopped the expansion of the velutina throughout the most populated community in Spain has been followed by something else: the anxiety generated by knowing that we have found them by pure chance. What if by chance? The discovery It was due to Eduardo Sáezthe biologist who owns the farm where the nest was found. Sáez is not an expert on wasps, but upon seeing him he realized that it was not normal and raised the alarm. Given this, it seems inevitable to ask not only what would have happened if they had not “caught it in time”; but if it really has been like that. Is there not one but dozens of Asian wasp nests maturing in Andalusia without anyone noticing? What is the vespa velutina? The Vespa velutina nigrithoraxnative to Southeast Asia, is an invasive species that arrived in Europe in 2004. It is not difficult to identify itbut it is not something trivial either: it is larger than the common wasp (up to 3.5 cm), it is darker and has an almost completely black abdomen. After expanding from Cantabria, the Basque Country and Galicia throughout the north of the peninsula, it is growing at a rate of 80 kilometers per year. In addition, and if that were not enough, it feeds on fruit, bees and other pollinating animals. To this, of course, we must add that this type of wasps are especially aggressive. Didier Descouens And in response to that, Alhaurín has taken a desperate measure. The municipality of Malaga, recognizing that it is unable to trace its entire area to ensure that the velutina is not growing elsewhere, has requested citizen collaboration: Dozens of neighbors and volunteers have supported the call and are combing the Pinos de Alhaurín area. This obviously entails security risks (due to improper approach to the nests) and false positives (putting other species at risk). However, the situation is very complicated. We must not forget that Málaga has been fighting against Vespa orientalisadding the velutina would be a disaster for provincial beekeeping (and for another half dozen sectors). Why this urgency? Because, as its impact has shown in the north of the peninsula and endorses technical literatureOnce it enters an ecosystem, eradicating it is almost impossible. And the city councils do not have enough of their own equipment to deal with this type of threats. Above all, in a context in which both climate change and anarchic urbanization have made it incredibly easy. A problem that goes beyond beekeeping. And, as I said, in less than two weeks and in the middle of autumn, three men have lost their lives in Galicia due to stings from velutina wasps. It is true that these are deaths related to “severe allergic reactions”, but that does not make the situation any more reassuring. We must not forget that Galicia has been fighting this insect for 15 years with massive trapping and nest removal programs. Without any success. In fact, according to the Xuntawe are experiencing an “extraordinary increase” due to “enormous adaptability” and asks for “caution, especially in the case of allergic people.” Image | Francis ITHURBURU In Xataka | After centuries of disappearance, there are people releasing beavers into the Tagus and other rivers in Spain. The problem is that we don’t know who

two out of three kilos of cinnamon that are imported to the EU have problems

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In 2022, the European Commission He did a study about the most popular spices on the market. The radiography was bleak: the fraud was the order of the day. Moreover, it was something extremely common. We talk about pepper, cumin, turmeric the saffron or paprika. That was a huge scandal and the same commission asked the Member States to reinforce the controls. What happened next can not surprise anyone. Let’s talk about cinnamon. In 2023, cinnamon was the fifth most imported spice in La Unión. In recent months, the commission science and knowledge service (The Joint Research Center) analyzed more than a hundred samples of cinnamon marketed in a dozen countries of the European Union. The result? More than 66% of the samples analyzed They have problems. What happens to them? Either they violate the international quality regulations or the food security legislation of the European Union. Some present indications of fraud, others a high amount of lead and some more exceed the legal limits of coumarin (a substance that, although natural, is potentially toxic to the liver). That without having fraud, of course. Up to 9% of the samples labeled as Canela de Ceilán were totally or partially replaced By Canela de Cassia, “a cheaper and lower quality alternative, with a stronger flavor and that contains cumarina naturally.” What we can do. That is the worst. Judging by the results of the JRC, we can do little with the media we have right now. “The type of irregularities detected in cinnamon, including fraudulent practices, is diverse and cannot be addressed with a single analytical technique, so standardized methods are needed,” The commission says. Taking the problem seriously, leading to take action on the matter. Above all, because the high rate of irregular samples of cinnamon in the European market indicates that “all actors in the sector, from political leaders to control laboratories and manufacturers, must pay attention.” Image | Michael Collett In Xataka | It seems honey, it smells like honey, it knows honey, it is not honey: the fraud in the imports that it ravages to Europe

The summers are so short in Finland that he has accepted a guest to enjoy the beaches: kilos of poop

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A few months ago, the Finnish nation was proclaimed for the eighth time the country Happy on the planet. Then we saw that nothing is perfect, because while it happened, the United States landed to prepare them next Battle for the Arctic. And between one thing and another, summer has reached its beaches. As always, it will not be very long, and this year is accompanied by an exorbitant amount of excrement. Brief and disputed. I told this week The New York Times. In a country where summer lasts just two months and the sun becomes a scarce good, every warm day is almost like a miracle. Helsinki, like the rest of the country, lives those weeks with intensity: crowded beaches, whole bicycle families and citizens anxious to take advantage of temperatures that in any other place would seem soft, but that exceed historical records here. However, in that space of evasion an unexpected intruder has appeared: the Barnaclas geeseRobust and gregarious birds that have colonized parks, avenues and, above all, the beaches of the capital. His MASIV PRESENCEA (more than 5,000 accounted for in the area last summer) has transformed the outdoor life into a constant surveillance exercise, where walkers must measure each step so as not to sink into excrements that accumulate in surprising quantities. The daily excrement. The problem, although an anecdotal in appearance, directly affects the enjoyment of a summer that the Finns consider sacred. On the beaches, before extending the towel you have to Check the groundVolley players pray not to land Bruces in a brown puddle, and parents watch with anguish that their young children do not confuse manure with sand or grass. The Times told That, in the parks, the lawn is upholstered with feces that are embedded in the soles, and in the central avenues the geese cross pedestrians with the same naturalness as the beatles very Beatles in Abbey Road. The figures illustrate the magnitude of the challenge: on some beaches, maintenance personnel collect more than 20 kg of excrement per daya volume that requires whole crews of seasonal workers, multiplied in the last decade. Failed innovations. For years, the Helsinki City Council has tested methods To contain the plague. They tried to mix the stool with the sand, but the water ended up contaminated. They used recordings of sea eagles to scare birds, but the geese got used to it soon. It was even studied to hire trained dogs, as other cities do, although they were too expensive and little available. The Great hope This summer was a machine designed by the maintenance team itself. A kind of sieve with wheels, similar to a manual corteped, which had to separate the feces from the sand. The problem? In practice it was Heavy and ineffective In humid soils, and ended up relegated to a warehouse. In the end, the most reliable resource remains the most rudimentary: shovel, gum gloves and infinite patience. Inevitable coexistence. The battle against geese, however, is limited by legislation and Finnish ethics: urban hunting or mass sacrifice is not allowed, such as in Canada or California, where transfers or culeing. In Helsinki, geese are not only a nuisance, but already part of the summer landscape, inserted in the urban imaginary and the daily routine of its inhabitants. In fact, the workers who collect the manure find a certain serenity in the repetitive task (although the smell persecutes them later). The reality is that, in a country where summer is too short to waste it, the Finns seem to accept this uncomfortable invasion as a price to pay to enjoy its beaches. With humor and stoicism, they have assumed that between the sun, water and sand there will always be a third guest: the omnipresent goose … and its inevitable trace. Image | JIP In Xataka | Finland is the happiest country in the world. And is also preparing thoroughly for the most unhappy end: war In Xataka | Finland has found a cheap way to store energy all winter: a tower of 2,000 tons of sand

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