MAR DE PLASTICO - The Plastic City that Produces Fruits and Vegetables

Welcome to Almeria's "Mar de Plastico", located in El Ejido (Spain).

Sources:

0:00 introduction
0:38 Inside Almeria's Mar de Plastico

[SvenMolhuijsen]

You should checkout Westland in the Netherlands, a similar area but with glass greenhouses. It's lit 24/7 and even during the night you can stand on 10km distance in the middle of nowhere and still see everything around you because of light pollution

[bajamarbass]

Nice to see you trying something new with this more investigative style. Great to see you in the subscription feed with new content.

[baptistamercado]

Welcome back!

I saw your community post saying this channel wasn’t abandoned. I thought it would be another few weeks before you posted again, and I expected some run of the mill, quick, no frills video.

I’m pleasantly surprised & glad your first vid (since the hiatus) was field work/site visit.

Doing field work/going out and visiting the site in person, really makes this channel stand out amongst channels with similar content.

[decflecc]

At 7:03 you made a mistake with the exchange rate. 5€=5, 5$ and not 3$. Just wanted to make people aware of that

[ameliarosealdridge]

As someone who lives and grew up in Almeria, one of our school trips was unironically to go to their colletion facilities where we learnt to grow tomatoes.

And to add to this, the mar de plástico is also at risk to being replaced with solar panels as Morocco has started to overtake "our products".

My hometown of Tabernas has had a massive solar panel farm that quite literally only stops next to cortijos (country houses). The megaproject is split into thousands of smaller projects that happened in a staggered succession to avoid any say from environmental groups and to avoid any mandatory environment tests.

EDIT: These projects ultimately devastate the area, leading to massive water shortages, corruption and all sorts of shady business.

The only reason not many people speak out against it is because people here are generally desperate for work and most people work under the table for at most 10-12€ an hour. Promise people jobs and people won't complain... If they ever were to complain.

To quote a friend from highschool, if you want any progress to be made, you have to rely on foreigners.

[CapybaraEnjoyer]

I'm so glad you're making videos in English again! I tried watching some videos on the main channel, but I don't speak Italian and YouTube's auto translate feature is pretty unintelligible

[longoniadriano]

Senza troppo giri di parole: c'è un grandissimo bisogno di video come questi mche mettono jn discussione le illusioni di superiorità di noi europei.
Piú fine uti come questi servirebbero a far sviluppare la nostra coscienza su certi argomenti.
Ben fatto: adesso di piú e meglio grazie.

[MrRoyalOss]

Isnt this the problem in most countries. The banana plantages in the South Americas, Maxicans in the USA, eastern Europeans in West Europa and even the tomato farms in Italy, all fueled by cheap illegal labor.

[mqdboy]

When I went to Almería I was surprised by the sheer magnitude of the greenhouses

[damiaanluc]

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Very insightful. Great work 🙏

[davesprivatelounge]

The fact that the seeds of these fruits and vegetables are sterile by design... I remember some African leader saying the grain they would receive as aid could not be used to grow more grain. These things are by design. Sounds like something a supervillain from some cartoon would create.

Incredibly dystopian

[alejandroojeda]

It's also important to note that agriculture IS innately a very destructive endeavour. The plastic sea looks bad, but with its impressive food productivity It saves thousands of acres of land from being "pretty" farms.

And btw, poor conditions inmigrant work is rampant in Spain, not just in the sea of plastic. Go to Lleida and you'll see the same, but with fruit trees.

[Drunken_Master]

Requiescat in pace drone!
Nice to see you back guys. When I found your channel I started feeling bit sad for not speaking Italian.

[jakob]

Omg he didn't give up on his YouTube channel. Best geopolitics channel on YouTube!!!

[perfectallycromulent]

there is a smaller sea of greenhouses in Zuid-Holland south of Den Haag

[harshaneelakandan]

You are the best economic/political commontator love your persepctives, we have missed your presence!

[User-kkys]

Just found this channel and hope it grows, love your videos.

[Cronkna]

Thanks for narrating it this time, I honestly didn’t watch because of that. But now I will

[TheAnthraxBiology]

Absolutely fantastic video. So glad you're back and loved how different this was.

[ManmadeHorrorsBeyond]

Great video, the shots from inside the place were downright surreal