In its forecast for the 2019 Castilian-Manchegan stone fruit campaign, Cooperativas Agro-alimentarias of Castile-La Mancha expects a 29.1% reduction in the harvest compared to last season. For the current 2019 campaign, the production is expected to reach 40,800 tons grown on 3,865 hectares. Last season, this figure amounted to 57,515 tons. José Carlos Blázquez, sector spokesperson at Cooperativas Agro-alimentarias, says that this sharp drop in the production is due to the impact of adverse weather conditions. "To this we must add the low prices and the difficulties in the sales, caused, on the one hand, by the low demand, and on the other, by the big harvest in France and Italy." For apricots, the production in the latest campaign amounted to about 12,200 tons, and the forecast for 2019 is to reach 4,000 tons. This 67.2% drop has been caused by heavy frost damage in late March. Apricots are the fruit with the sharpest drop in the production this campaign. In 2018, peach shipments amounted to a total of 15 tons, which matches the forecast for 2019. The Paraguayo peach production is expected to reach 1,085 tons, compared to the 2,000 tons of 2018, which entails a drop of 45.8%. The pavia (yellow peach) production is falling by 17.9%, going from 39,000 tons in 2018 to 32,000 tons this year. The nectarine production is down by 15% (from 2,000 tons to 1,700); and the plum volume has been reduced by 13%, going from 2,300 tons in 2018 to 2,000 this year. Regarding the national data, Cooperativas Agro-alimentarias of Spain reported a national harvest forecast of 1,874,182 tons in 2019, which entails an increase of 5.9% over the previous year. By categories, nectarines continue to be the fruit with the highest volume, with an estimate of 635,141 tons (+14.6% compared to 2018), followed by Paraguayo peaches, with 331,776 tons (+11.9%), peaches, with 331,762 tons (+6.4%) and pavias, with 305,701 tons (-1.4%). The plum production volume stands at 146,261 tons (+23.6%), while the apricot volume has been sharply reduced, down to 96,541 tons (-36.7%). Source - https://www.freshplaza.com